The House We Never Built
by yellowcottondresses
Summary: Colt understands what it's like to have your life separated into before and after. And he promised himself he would learn from Luke's mistakes.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: I have zero explanation for this. Except, this is what happens when you have a hiatus that's so long I re-watch the same ten episodes enough times to come up with this crazy idea.**

 **I.**

Shrinks have seen every manifestation of crazy.

Guys who eat their own toenails. Guys who think their dog is planning to kill them. Guys who swear God is talking to them. Probably a dozen versions of the "I see dead people" kid.

And now, this doctor has guys like Colt. Guys who are fine one minute, then losing it the next, and nobody can tell them why.

"What do you remember about the night in Atlanta, when you were sixteen?"

Atlanta again. Six years ago. Like the shrink doesn't have an entire file that would tell him everything Colt has said about Atlanta before now. Why not just look at those notes? See what other people have said about why Colt is so crazy?

Because the shrink needs Colt to talk.

And he doesn't want to talk. Especially about that.

 **II.**

Everyone believes it's the other way around, but when Colt's son was born, he was the one who suggested the boy go by Leda's name instead of his.

He'd never thought much about names before, but having a kid will do to you. It will make you change your mind about a lot of things, and make decisions you thought you were years away from making. Especially when you're nineteen, the ink barely dry on your high school diploma.

So when he and Leda finally decided on their son's name four days before he was born, Colt brought up the business of the last name, saying it should be hers. And when the birth certificate was issued a few weeks later, the only time the name "Wheeler" appeared on the page was on the line above the word FATHER.

Even then, it didn't feel right. Wheeler men and fatherhood didn't exactly have the best track record. But the way Colt saw it, things would work out better this way. It had been over two years since he'd spoken to his father, and he had no intention of introducing Luke to his first grandchild.

There was enough heartache in the world. No need to introduce it so young to someone so vulnerable, so trusting, so in need of stability and strength and unconditional love. So easy to hurt.

Gabriel Lucas Del Rosario was his son. The most important person in Colt's life. The one relationship that came into his world full of unquestioned devotion, and the only one he couldn't live without.

And unlike his father, he didn't need to brand himself all over something to make it worthwhile.

He'd learn from Luke's mistakes.

 **III.**

This one time, Sage cut her foot.

It was the middle of summer, and he was having a cookout at his mom and stepdad's house. Gabe was still a baby, barely crawling. His stepdad Phil was grilling burgers while his mom brought out her three-bean salad and told Colt to fill the ice chest. She was laughing, and Phil was singing Elvis Costello off-key, and Sage was texting her friend and Mom told her to get off the phone because there were no cell phones during "family time". Then she reminded Colt to fill the ice chest, and bounced her grandson on her waist, happy to be holding him.

Sage opened her mouth to argue with their mom, but her words cut off abruptly. She froze on the patio, lifting one leg like a flamingo, with the other planted on the ground. She stared down at the sole of her lifted foot, and when Colt followed her gaze, he saw the blood dripping from a long, jagged gash in her skin, where a large piece of glass was lodged.

Phil stopped grilling and rushed inside, saying something about gauze. Sage whimpered, and his mom settled her into a patio chair, warning her not to touch the glass or try and take it out. Colt didn't remember being handed the baby, but suddenly his son was in his arms, staring at the commotion around him with a bewildered expression while he sucked on his chubby fist. His mother was peering at the wound on Sage's foot when his stepdad came back out with clean towels and a bottle of peroxide. Mom pressed one of the towels to his sister's foot, and there was so much blood soaking through everything, so much bright red everywhere.

Colt shivered.

The towers were soaked through in seconds and Sage was still bleeding, leaving streaks of gore on the ground. It looked like someone has splashed red paint everywhere, except for the tangy, coppery smell, like dirty money. So much red everywhere he looked, except in the places where the blood was the deepest.

There, it was almost black.

 _(Black blood smeared on the concrete – )_

No, not concrete. Wood. Patio. They were on a patio. At Mom and Phil's house. In Virginia.

 _(Not in a hotel. Not on a rooftop. Not in Atlanta.)_

Sage was hurt. His sister was hurt, and bleeding, so much.

Sage was _hurt._

 _(Black blood smeared on the concrete – )_

His mother asked him to get damp washcloths twice, and sounded annoyed when he didn't listen. He felt like throwing up, but managed to hold it in.

She'd live.

She would be fine.

Fine.

FINE.

He wasn't going to see her die.

 **IV.**

Leda tells him: _you don't know how it feels to be me._

Colt tells her: _you don't know how it feels to be me._

They are both right, and they are both wrong.

 **V.**

The shrink's office has a carpet.

It looks like something his grandma would keep in her house and is ugly as shit. Blue in the center, outlined in pink flowers that look like they wilted a long time ago. The blossoms look like they're just about to drop down to the earth, but instead they're frozen at the moment just before the plunge; limbs twining around the blue center, almost reaching for each other but not quite; nothing to catch them when they eventually fall.

He can spend the entire session staring at that carpet, willing the flowers to touch each other. Imagining the thread that could reach between them. A slender tightrope, a lifeline.

He often does. He hates this office.

But he's here because if he doesn't go to this fucking office and sit on this fucking couch and stare at this fucking carpet and talk about what happened that night in Atlanta when he was sixteen years old, he won't be allowed to see Gabe. His son will grow up without a dad and Colt grew up without a dad and it sucked, and even when he had his dad he never really had Luke, because Luke always had something more important going on that was more important than his family.

So here he is, with years of secrets and a kid at home who needs him and a busted hand he doesn't know how to explain.

"Do you want to talk about something else?" the doctor asks.

Colt shifts on the couch, shakes his head. What's the point? Sooner or later, the shrink is going to bring the conversation back to the same thing – how he hurt his hand. Which he thought had something to do with Atlanta. Because shrinks always thought everything had to do with Atlanta.

Because they're right; sooner or later, everything in Colt's life circles back to Atlanta.

 **VI.**

For a while, he was so messed up that he wasn't allowed to see his son. "Unfit" was the exact word the court used. Colt didn't exactly disagree, but he begged in the courtroom to anyone who would listen – Leda, her parents, their grim-faced lawyer, the lady judge he'd hoped would be sympathetic because maybe she had kids of her own. But whether she did or didn't, it hardly mattered what Colt said to her; she passed down her sentence despite his pleas.

When Leda's parents finally let him see Gabe again, it had been almost two months since he stood in front of that judge. By then his son was walking and talking, and peered at Colt shyly from behind his mother's legs. Leda looked at him with an apology written on her face, but all Colt saw was the way that his own son looked at him like he was a stranger.

"I tried to tell him about you," Leda told him, and he wished she'd tried harder. "I'd point to pictures and say, 'that's Daddy. That's your Daddy'. And he'd repeat it, too. He'd point right at you and say, 'Daddy'. I showed him your face as much as I could. And when we started teaching him to pray, I told him to pray for you."

Gabe stared at him from underneath too much unruly dark hair. There was so much of it, and it was so curly and messy, just like Colt's, and Leda's, too. Colt couldn't tell which one of them Gabe took after more.

But he did know that he studied his son's face and didn't see much of Luke there, so that was something.

 **VII.**

Leda understands: what it's like to know something marks you as _different._

And not just because she was one of just a handful of non-white kids at the boarding school she and Colt both attended, which meant she was always featured on the school pamphlets to promote "a diverse population of students from all ethic and socioeconomic backgrounds". As if Leda's mother wasn't an attorney and her dad wasn't a dentist, and they didn't live in a nice, three-story house in a wealthy suburb.

Leda understands: what it's like to feel like the whole world is weighted on your shoulders. Like the smallest wind could blow you to your knees. Like you'll someday be crushed under the load you're forced to carry every day. Like if you jumped into the ocean, you'd sink so quickly you'd never have time to struggle.

Before Gabe was born, she thought the worst thing that could happen was failing a test. Embarrassing herself in front of the school. Not getting into her top college choices. Making a mistake, looking stupid. Knowing people expected big things of you, whether it was because you were Filipina _("All Asians are smart! It's a fact!" "You're not Asian; all Asians look alike" "Whatever, I just of you as Chinese")_ because you were black _("You're black? No way! You speak so well for a black person!" "I don't really think of you as a black person. You don't act like a black person. You're not ghetto at all. You're like a white girl who looks a little black." "Well, we know one person who didn't get into this school because of Affirmative Action! Good thing, too, because you deserve it!")_ because you were biracial _("What are you?" "No, I mean, where are you REALLY from?")_ or because no matter how smart you were or how many tests you aced or how many rules you followed, there was always something holding you back. Some arbitrary, invisible rule no one else had to follow that you didn't see or understand, but somehow knew you'd broken.

After she got pregnant, there were new fears. Teen mom statistics. The high school drop-out rates. The data on minorities and poverty and crime and prison and welfare. The dirty looks people shot her. The school asking her to leave because she set a "bad example".

Then there was everyone's reactions; it was either the total surprise that this could happen to "such a good girl", or the total lack of surprise that this could happen to "a girl like her". Nobody ever explained to her what it meant to be "a girl like her", but either way, Leda had somehow failed who everyone else expected her to be, no matter what the opinion was.

After Gabe was born, she realized the worst thing that could happen was something happening to him. Not just death or disease or any of the other million little ways children can be snatched off the earth as suddenly as they appeared, but the little things. The more insidious, quiet ways the world could harm her son.

" _He doesn't have an accent."_

" _So, are you, like, a Tiger Mom? I heard all Asian moms are Tiger Moms."_

" _Well, he'll have an advantage over all the smart kids when it comes to getting into a good college!"_

" _He can't be white. No way. He has nappy black hair."_

" _No way that's his dad. They look nothing alike. How surprised was he when the kid popped out and he was black?"_

" _Are you worried his English won't be good?"_

" _Where is he from? No, really?"_

" _What is he?"_

Like he isn't even human.

But Leda doesn't understand: What it's like to have shadows crawling inside your mind. To have darkness in your heart, invading your dreams.

How a body looks when every bone is shattered on hard concrete. That when so much blood leaks out of a body it's impossible for it to do anything but die, the blood isn't red. It's black. And when you look at it, you can see the sky reflected in the shiny darkness.

What it feels like to jolt awake in the middle of the night in agony, reliving the fall. Until the moment you wake up, and believe you were the body that crashed to the cement hundreds of feet down.

 **VIII.**

This one time, he was downtown with Maddie and her friends.

They were walking down Lower Broad past bars they were too young to get into, hearing the snippets of different songs coming from inside each one, every singer hoping to be the next Somebody. Maddie's arm was around his waist, her hand in his, and it was so warm and solid and smooth he could almost forget his head was aching.

Except when they passed a busker outside Robert's Western World. Then, Colt's skull suddenly felt like it was going to explode. And not just because the guy was singing some beer-and-truck song with a voice like putting nails in a blender.

Maddie's friends rushed ahead, laughing and shouting and smiling, oblivious, and Maddie peered up at him from where she was tucked under his arm. Then she saw his face and frowned.

"Are you okay?"

He ran a hand over his face. "Yeah. Just, that guy's giving me the worst headache."

Maddie looked puzzled. "What guy?"

"You know." Colt turned around, jerking his thumb in the direction of the busker, and was surprised to see how far away from them he was. From the volume of the guy's terrible voice, Colt could have sworn the guy was following directly behind him and Maddie, shouting directly in their ears.

Maddie looked at where he was pointing, still looking confused.

"How can you even hear him?"

"You mean you can't?"

She shook her head. "I didn't even notice him."

Colt could still hear the guy's voice ringing in his ears, driving spikes through his brain. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand and muttered, "God, his voice is terrible. I kind of want to smack him over the head with his guitar."

Maddie gave him a strange look, not knowing whether to laugh or take him seriously. He watched her bite her lip, and forced himself to smile, even though his head felt ready to split open.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asked, her voice quiet. They were standing in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, and people bumped against them as they walked past, giving them dirty looks for hogging up the tiny space. Maddie's friends were long gone, far ahead of them.

Colt took a deep breath, willing himself to get a grip. The busker was too far away from them; as long as they kept walking, Colt would stop hearing his godawful voice pierce the air like a drill. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and his eyes drifted upward to the towering Nashville skyline above their heads.

For a minute, he swore he could see someone standing on the roof of one of those tall buildings.

He staggered backward, bumping into someone, someone who shouted, someone who cursed, and then he heard Maddie apologizing, dimly, like she was far away. He took another step back; more angry voices, more yelling, all of it sounding like he was at the far end of a tunnel or at the deepest end of the ocean, where the world was dark and hazy.

He turned and fled.

Colt needed to get away from there. The corner, the busker, the voices, the yelling. His heart was racing, and he swore it felt like someone was chasing him, even though he knew it was stupid, nothing was chasing him, and he was running and bumping into more people and they were yelling but he couldn't hear their voices, he just kept running, he couldn't stay here, not in the shadow of those tall buildings, not where maybe there was a person on top of one of them and maybe it was real and maybe it wasn't but maybe he did see it and soon he'd see someone falling through the air, then hear someone shouting, someone desperate, and then the thud on the concrete that didn't sound like a person hitting the ground, didn't sound like anything at all, just a dull thump, that's all the sound a body made when it finally reached the bottom…

Sirens. Flashing lights. Voices. They were from somewhere in the distance. He felt cold and sick and dizzy, and finally, when he felt like his lungs would explode, he came to a stop in an alleyway somewhere. He leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath, tugging at his shirt because it felt too tight. It was soaked with sweat and made his clammy skin shiver.

A hand hesitantly landed on his shoulder, and he spun around, hands flying upward towards his face. Maddie jumped backward and almost tripped over the heel of her boot, arms raised over her head to protect herself. She looked afraid, like she had no idea who he was.

He made her afraid of him.

He felt like he was going to be sick.

Her eyes were huge, tears pooling in the corners as she slowly reached out to touch his shoulder.

"Colt?" her voice wobbled. "Are you okay?"

He flapped a hand at her. He tried to make it a nonchalant gesture – _sure, fine, I duck into alleyways and have private freakouts and hallucinations all the time_ – but he could barely hold himself upright against the wall, and planted both palms against the freezing concrete so he could suck in a deep breath.

Maddie watched him, her face white.

"Hang on," she said, and pulls out her phone. "I'm gonna call my mom."

 _No_ , he wanted to say. _Leave her out of this._

He peered up at the building where he thought he saw the person. Sure enough, the figure he thought he saw was gone; Colt knew now it was never there to begin with. He could finally breathe normally, and as quickly as he suddenly felt sick, he felt fine again, the world turned rightside-up.

"It's fine," he said to Maddie, as she clamped the phone to her ear. "Really. I just felt dizzy. I think I just need some water."

She looked doubtful, her face wary. "You sure? That was…kind of freaky. You looked like you were gonna pass out."

"Well, I'm not." He forced a smile, and put his arms around her waist, drawing her close. "See? Look, I didn't eat dinner before I came to get you, and I forgot to eat lunch, too. I'm probably just hungry. Didn't Talia say we were getting food?"

Maddie frowned, but he could feel the hesitation melting away by degrees. Colt grinned at her, pulling her more tightly into his hold, and she finally smiled, looking relieved.

"I'll text her," she told him. "Tell her we're ready to eat now."

Maddie hung up before her mother could pick up the phone, and started texting Talia about dinner. Colt held onto her, fingers intertwined, wishing they were alone. A place that was quiet, a place that was solid. A place without dark alleys or tall buildings; a place without shadows.

(Later, when they slipped away from the rest of her friends at Talia's house party and snuck into one of the guest rooms, her coat and scarf and boots and blouse puddling on the cold wooden floor and his hands in her hair, he'd watch their shadows move against the wall. They rose and fell against the paint, liquid and even, like darkness taking a breath.)

 **IX.**

Colt understands: what it's like to have your life separated into before and after.

He understands what it's like to feel like you're going through the motions of your own life, wearing a skin that doesn't feel like yours. To feel a million miles away from someone sitting right in front of you, stroking your face with loving hands or kissing you with so much tenderness, or looking into your eyes and begging you to just talk to them.

To try and act more like the person you used to be, and only be able to conjure hazy memories of who that person was; when you do, those moments feel saturated and tinted as an Instagram photo, like images of someone else's life.

Colt understands: what it's like to have his heart pick up whenever he's in a crowded room. How he can be breathing normally one moment and the next feel like he's on fire, choking on smoke, gasping for air and not finding any.

He knows what it feels like to be betrayed by the one person who is never supposed to betray you, and hurt you like you were never supposed to be hurt.

He knows what it's like to lose faith in everything and everyone you ever believed in, watching the foundations your life was built on crumble like wet sand.

He knows what it's like to see his father make a fist and aim it at his face, expression enraged as he moves to strike his child.

Colt does not understand: what it's like to live in a world where odds are already stacked against you just by existing in it.

Walking into a room and knowing you are the only one there who looks like you. To not see yourself anywhere, on TV or in books or in your classrooms. Having people stare openly, gawking like you're an animal in the zoo. Being cut down by the smallest, most insignificant comments that don't seem hurtful, but are there to remind you that you are different, other, less.

To hear whispers, murmurs, open hostility, rude questions. To be mocked right to your face. To belong to two worlds and not feel at home in either; to not understand parts of yourself.

To have people think they know everything there is to know about you with just one look, without ever saying a word.

 **X.**

Nashville is a lot like high school – no matter how hard you try to avoid them, you can't avoid running into certain people, and everybody knows each other's business. So when he runs into Maddie and her boyfriend at the park one afternoon, it only half-surprises him.

It's one of the first times he's been out with Gabe and Leda, just the three of them, like they could be a real family. They took the boy to Centennial Park to let him run around, and so far he's taken two faceplants in the dirt, shredded a half dozen dandelions in his palm, and tried to chase one irascible duck towards the pond before Colt snagged him by the back of his sweater and hauled him away from the water.

He's carrying his son back towards where Leda sits on a blanket in the shade when he sees them, and even though it's been almost three years since he last saw her he could recognize her from halfway across the park. But here she is, five feet away from him, holding the hand of some hipster in wire-framed glasses and black skinny jeans and a knitted cap, even though it's the middle of May and eighty-five degrees outside, you douche.

Maddie doesn't look like she's changed at all from the days when Colt clung to her, terrified of losing her, because after Atlanta she'd become the one good part of his life. Fearless, full of fire, iron-willed and proud and a little nervous and uncertain, but never enough to hold her back. Still beautiful.

Just like he remembers her.

Maddie recognizes him, and they're so close and she's so started by the fact that he's standing right here with a brown-skinned child in his arms that there's no way they can pretend like they're strangers. She recovers while Colt pretends to fiddle with the snaps on Gabe's jeans, swiping off imaginary dust and grass.

"Hey!"

She looks like she wants to lean in for a hug, but then her arms twitch at her sides like she's reminding herself not to. Instead she just smiles and nods.

The introductions are made. Hipster Tool, meet Ex-Boyfriend. Ex-Boyfriend, Meet Hipster Tool.

He watches the way Maddie looks at Gabe, the expression trying not to curl its way across her face.

First True Love, meet Gabriel. Ex-Boyfriend's child.

Result of drunken party hook-up in some rich townie's basement. Cause of so much of your teenage heartache. Grandson of a man who has never laid eyes on this boy, and if Colt has his way, never will.

(Grandson who, for some reason Colt can't explain and doesn't want to think about, was partially named after his said grandfather.)

(Lucas; bringer of light. He didn't know that, when they named Gabe. When he realized what it meant, the irony was enough to almost make him believe in a god.)

And a Capricorn, in case you were wondering.

Her eyes can't stop darting to Gabe, searching his face and Colt's, a confirmation this is who she thinks it has to be. She knows he has a kid; Maddie was the first person he told after Leda got pregnant. Even his mom and stepdad didn't know yet. He needed to talk to Maddie first.

He knew it would hurt her. He knew they only broke up a few weeks ago. He knew she didn't return any of his desperate calls or text messages in the days right after, when he begged her to come back, promising he'd get help, promising he'd talk to her, that he loved her and she was the only good thing in his whole miserable fucking life. He knew she still loved him; she told him so, when she broke his heart and said she couldn't do this anymore and she loved him, she loved him so much and wanted so badly to help him, but whatever he couldn't talk to her about, whatever had changed with him, it was destroying him and she couldn't help him.

It took her over a week to call him back.

He told her about Leda. She yelled. She cried. She called him a few names he expected and more he had no idea Maddie even knew. She cried some more and told him to never call her again.

He did, once. A few months after that phone call, he texted Maddie with another "I'm sorry" and some variation of "I know I screwed up and I hurt you but I still care about you and I wanted you to know that". Her father responded to that text, calling him directly and giving Colt an earful about disrespecting his daughter and making his own choices, and how Maddie wasn't going to be reeled in by his mess, and if he kept hurting her like this, he'd pay for it.

Colt believed Deacon.

And now here they are.

Maddie wears the same look everyone has when they see Colt with his son, and it disappoints him to see it on her face. Maybe it was just that teenage first love sheen of holding someone on a pedestal, but he'd expected her to be different, for some reason. Not like the people who looked at the boy, looked at Colt, and asked, "So, where is he from? No, I mean, really? Where is he _really_ from?"

Or the ones who ask, "What is he?", like he's something other than human.

"So, this is your son."

She bends down to Gabe's height and smiles, waving to him. He giggles and waves back, and for a second Maddie's face lights up and things are monumentally less awkward.

Hipster Tool is half-scowling at Colt, but Maddie ignores him.

"What's his name?"

"Gabriel. We just call him Gabe."

Maddie's smile freezes on her face at the word "we".

"And you and his mom are here together?" Her voice is determinedly neutral. "That's sweet. A family day."

Colt can't stop nodding; he feels like a bobblehead.

"Yeah. We thought we'd enjoy this weather. Let him run around. He hated being inside all winter."

"Right?" Maddie can't stop nodding either. "It was pretty brutal."

Masters of awkward small talk.

Hipster Tool glares at Colt through his boy band haircut, and says something under his breath to Maddie. She gives him a scowl that pleases Colt, but then she stands up, dusts the dirt from her jeans, and gives him one last smile.

"It was great to see you."

Then, as if she feels bad about lying through her teeth, she adds, "he is so cute", and grins back down at Gabriel, waving goodbye.

"Yeah." Colt watches the boy mimic her motions, his chubby little hands fluttering like bird wings. "Great to see you, too."

She walks away and he doesn't see if she turns to look back. The only way he can go is straight ahead. Back to the shade of the trees, back to Leda, back to the warm spring afternoon with his son.


	2. Chapter 2

**I.**

Being a parent is weird.

Before Gabe was born, he and Leda barely talked about what kind of choices they wanted to make about their son. They were nineteen years old and having a baby right after high school; that fact alone overwhelmed them both. They didn't have the headspace to think about any other life-changing decisions.

After he was born, they were so swamped with diapers and bottles and crying and puke and burping and more crying and more diapers and strung out on lack of sleep. Leda still likes to tell the story about how, when Gabe was about two weeks old, she was awake for so long she started to hallucinate. Colt remembers the day she turned to him and said she understood sleep deprivation was used as a form of torture. Both of them were too tired to remember their own names, never mind make life-altering decisions about the fate of this tiny human who they were charged with taking care of for the rest of their lives.

Now, whenever he and Leda have to figure out the best way to teach their son about the world, Colt still isn't sure what to do.

He used to think that if he just did the opposite of what Luke did, maybe things would turn out okay. Believe in something, tell the truth. Don't take any short-cuts; work hard for everything you have. Show the kind of person you are through the actions you perform. It's what Granddad taught him, and what Colt wanted to teach his son.

But the older he gets, the more he realizes that nobody knows what the fuck they're actually doing.

One minute you're the only person you have to be accountable for, and the next you're given a totally raw piece of human that is blank and innocent and completely fragile and helpless. And you have to teach it how to survive, somehow.

When he talked to his mother about this, she laughed and said, "Welcome to the club, sweetheart. Nobody knows what they're doing. You didn't come with a manual."

He wonders if his dad felt this way, when he was born. If he looked at Colt and thought, "oh shit, I have no idea what the fuck I am doing with you. Oh god, oh, god, oh god, please don't let me fuck this up."

Then he slams the door on that idea. Luke was hardly ever home when Sage was a baby; Colt remembers his mother crying at night on the phone with his father, begging him to come home because she needed help. Luke's idea of help was to hire a nanny, and from then on he and Sage had a slew of them parade in and out of the Wheeler house. None of them ever lasted more than three or four months, so he never got attached to them and doesn't remember any of their names. If his father made himself scarce when Sage was a newborn, Colt figures he probably pulled the same disappearing act with him. There was always some excuse for Luke – touring, recording, promoting, partying.

Even now, with Gabe no longer a fragile newborn but a sturdy toddler, walking and talking, it's hard to think about. When Leda was pregnant, he was a bump in her belly, an image on a sonogram. When he was a newborn, he was a tiny, wrinkled alien who screamed nonstop. Then he started to look more and more human, and they both realized that's exactly what he was. As silly as it sounds, it took them a few months to realize that they had actually created an entirely other person. Not just an extension of themselves, but a living, breathing person with his own thoughts and feelings and emotions.

It's kind of awesome, to see Gabe discover the world around him. But it's also the most fucking terrifying thing in the universe, knowing that his son gets a little older every single day.

Colt can't drive a stick shift, and burns himself making toast. He only passed tenth grade chemistry because Erin Chambers let him copy her homework. He still remembers all the lyrics to every song from _Aladdin_. He still dresses the same way he did when he was still in high school, listens to the same music. Likes the same food, the same TV shows. He and Gabe can play for hours with his son's train set, because for the past year and a half Gabe has been obsessed with trains, and Colt doesn't just do it to spend time with his kid. He does it because he likes sitting on the floor and pushing a little wooden train down a little wooden track, making chug-chug-chug noises and whistling when it pulls into the station. All of this, and he's partially responsible for the existence, health, and happiness of an entire human being.

He has no idea how he's supposed to help Gabe. No idea what genetic time bombs might be coded in the little boy's DNA, lying dormant, waiting to strike when he's older and able to see the world without innocence.

How can he teach Gabe anything when he has no clue what he's doing? How can he help someone when he can't even help himself?

II.

One afternoon he's the drug store with Gabe, waiting to check out, and he sees a familiar face looking back at him from the cover of some celebrity magazine.

His father is grinning broadly, the face sold on millions of other covers just like this one. The one that says he's on top of the world, that he has everything he could possibly need, and nothing he doesn't.

Including, Colt guesses, his family.

The cashier says something Colt doesn't hear. As soon as she slides his bag over the counter, he snatches it away from her, taking Gabe by the arm and hurrying out of the store.

Colt makes it to his car. Straps Gabe into his chair, ignores his son's whines of protests, his tears at being confined. Climbs inside. The damp morning settles in his bones, and even with the heat blasting he's still freezing, shivering with his fingers clamped into the fabric of his jeans, cheeks aching from biting them so hard he thinks he can taste blood in his mouth.

 **III.**

Leda's family is very into names.

When he lived with his mom and stepdad, Colt only went to church on Christmas and Easter. A couple funerals for relatives he didn't know, a few weddings for distant cousins. When he moved in with Granddad, he went to church every Sunday without exception, a small Baptist church that looked like it hadn't been renovated since the days Jesus actually roamed the earth.

Before Gabe was born, Leda's father asked Colt how he'd been raised. When he said, "I think Baptist, but without the actual baptism", he frowned at Colt with dark eyes hard as flint, crossed his arms over his chest, and Colt wondered if Mr. Del Rosario thought he was being a smartass.

Her parents made themselves coordinators of Gabe's religious teachings. Which did little to thrill Colt's mother, who wanted her grandson to be baptized in the church she had grown up going to in Virginia – not some Catholic enclave tucked in a dark copse of trees off a highway that lead to nowhere. His mother was always suspicious of Catholics – the rituals, the language, the sternness and the silence. But Leda's parents wouldn't budge, so Gabe was baptized at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church when he was three weeks old. Leda's older brothers were his godfathers, Sage was his godmother, and he was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit on a freezing January morning, where the ground outside the stained-glass walls were rimed with frost and the man-made lake across the street had mist rising off the brown runoff water. It looked like a child blowing out a breath into the cold, trying to see the white puff of air the chill would show.

His son didn't cry, when the priest poured the water on his forehead and recited the words. He screwed up his face in the most unbelievably pissed off expression of all time, tiny fists waving out trying to find something to Hulk-smash, brow wrinkled and mouth wide open like he wanted to scream, but wouldn't give the old man the satisfaction.

Colt was so proud of him. His son wasn't going to take anything without a fight.

Gabriel was a suggestion from Leda's mother, who never came out and said it but made it abundantly clear that her grandson had to have a Biblical name. Leda, for the most part, just rolled her eyes at the whole ordeal.

"They're being such hypocrites," she told him one afternoon. They were in the waiting room at her OB-GYN's office, waiting for another ultrasound. "They need a religious name for him, but not my brothers. Where in the Bible do you see anybody named Tahj and Andre?" She scowled. "Nowhere, that's where."

She winced, and had one hand on her stomach, holding it there for a moment. Then her face relaxed, and she ran her hands across the bump under her jacket, breathing through her teeth.

He watched her.

"Better than me," he said. "My name literally means 'little boy horse'. That's it. My name is 'Little Boy Horse Wheeler' because my dad grew up in Kentucky and is obsessed with horses. No deeper meaning, no important family heritage. He named me after a horse."

Leda gave him a tight smile. "One more reason you think the guy's an asshole, I guess?"

He watched her hand, still resting on her stomach.

"Yeah," he murmured, but was shrugging his shoulders as he said it.

They dissolved into silence for a little while, Leda with her head against the wall and her eyes closed. This close to the due date, she was tired all the time.

"Leda was the mother of Helen of Troy," she said after a while, when he thought she'd drifted off. Her eyes were still closed, head against the wall, but she shifted in her seat and sighed. "The only thing she did that was ever important was have sex with Zeus when he was disguised as a swan. Which, as a kid, I never realized was completely fucking gross and weird. I mean, so he pretends to be a bird, but does he change back into a guy before having sex with her? Or did she literally have sex with a bird?" She snorts. "Swans are supposed to be really nasty, anyway."

Colt laughed.

"So I'm named after a horse," he said. "And you're named after a girl who had sex with a really mean bird."

She grinned at him, and he saw, not for the first time, how pretty she really was.

He'd known Leda since they were kids at Ridgedale Academy, their ultra-tiny boarding school tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It was the claustrophobia of going to school with the same people every day, and living only a couple of footsteps away from each other. You knew things about each other you wish you didn't, seen them with food in their teeth and tangles in their hair, with BO and morning breath and in their pajamas. They'd seen the personal things they carried into the dorm showers in their plastic caddies. Even if Colt and Led had only exchanged a handful of words in the years they'd been classmates, they knew each other the same way they knew everyone else at Ridgedale – by virtue of existing in the same space as one another for so long.

They'd had classes together every year, lived on different floors of the same dorms, even sat together at lunch a few times. They'd even been partners on a history project in seventh grade; Colt remembers he slacked off, and Leda carried most of the weight because she didn't want a failing grade.

It was about the Seige of Leningrad. They got an A.

Still, small as Ridgedale was, he barely said two words to her that didn't have to do with school until the night of that party. Before that night, she was just one of the faces he saw that made up his everyday landscape – present and forgettable, just as permanent as a familiar street corner, taken for granted until one day you open your eyes and take a look around and realize that nothing is what you think it is, that there is more going on below the surface than you ever realized, and everything you know is suddenly thrown for a loop.

All Colt knew about Gabriel was that he was an angel from the Christmas story, but Mrs. Del Rosario said it meant "God is my strength", and that he was God's messenger to chosen people. Colt didn't put much stock in the whole Jesus business (and kept his mouth shut about it in front of Leda and her family) but he thought it didn't sound half-bad.

Being able to put your faith in something bigger than yourself, letting it give you strength. It wasn't a luxury he'd been afforded, not since Atlanta.

 **IV.**

This one time, Gabe had a fever.

He was only a few months old back then, hot and uncomfortable and wouldn't stop crying, and after being up all night with a screaming baby who didn't sleep, Leda snapped at him to call the pediatrician first thing in the morning so they could get in to see her.

Gabe was still screaming, so Colt took his cell to the opposite end of the house, where his son's cries were muffled by distance. He didn't have the number for the pediatrician, but remembered that it was kept on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a colorful fish.

He went into the kitchen, and there was the phone number for Gabe's doctor. He was about to dial the number when the landline erupted.

Colt dropped his cell; it was as if someone electrocuted him. Spinning around so fast he nearly fell in socked feet, he watched the black cordless telephone scream and scream and scream, the light on the holder blinking like the lights of a cop car an ambulance an emergency, the phone whirring like a siren on and on and on…

For some reason, his head starts to pound. He couldn't breathe. Needed air.

Colt darted to the Del Rosario's back porch and leaned over the edge, staring at the grassy backyard below. For a moment, it was like the ground was rushing up to meet him, like he was floating, and he slammed his eyes shut, forcing himself to suck in a deep breath that tasted like mulch and onion grass. When he opened his eyes the ground below him was wobbling, and he stumbled backward, falling into a lawn chair. Colt tripped and fell in a tangle of limbs and stray tree branches, swearing as his ankle twisted in the fall.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

He was still sitting in a heap on the wooden porch floor, ankle throbbing, teeth gritted, head spinning, trying to catch his breath when Mr. Del Rosario poked his head out the back door, looking surprised. Probably wondering why Colt was sitting outside this early in the morning, still in his pajamas.

"Did you hear that?" Colt said, in lieu of a greeting.

Mr. Del Rosario frowned. "Hear what? The garbage truck?"

"No." He rubbed his forehead. The phone had stopped ringing – it must have, or else Leda's dad or her mom or Leda or her brothers or SOMEONE would have answered it, not just let it keep screaming, because couldn't they hear how loud it was? The shrill sound burrowed itself in his bones like an electric shock, and he couldn't stop twitching.

Mr. Del Rosario was still watching him, a scowl forming on his face, so Colt made himself stand on his throbbing ankle and tried to straighten out the patio furniture he knocked over.

"I thought I heard someone," he said, hobbling inside the house. "Calling for me. Guess not."

Her dad shrugged. "Probably Leda. The baby's been screaming all night."

He gave Colt a pointed look, as if Colt didn't know that himself.

The pediatrician. He still needed to call the damn pediatrician.

The cordless house phone was still sitting in the same place he left it. The message light wasn't blinking; whoever it was, they didn't leave a message.

If anybody really called.

Was he hearing things?

No, he thought, but a cold weight was already creeping into the pit of his stomach. The phone had to have rung. Everyone had to have heard it.

It was so _loud._ Like someone screaming.

 **V.**

When he started therapy, the doctor talked to him a lot about "triggers".

It could be anything. A smell, a sound, and it could bring him back to the night Jeff died, making him see it over and over again. Every time, the same horror, the same confusion, the same hazy moments of disbelief, followed by blind panic.

It sounded stupid to him, more shrink mumbo-jumbo, and he's hated talking to shrinks about that night ever since his dad tried to force him to years ago. But the more the doctor goes on about it, the more it kind of makes sense.

He could never drink bourbon after that night. Colt always told himself the taste reminded him too much of how sick he'd been, how bad the hangover was the next morning in that hotel room with his dad and Gabriella, watching the rest of the world find out about Jeff. Except that wasn't really the truth, because after that night, the smell of bourbon would always make his stomach churn, and it wasn't because he drank too much stolen booze.

He still can't smell bourbon without feeling his heart drop into his stomach.

Then there was the whole business with the cell phone, and he'd had to change the sound it made because he couldn't have the ringer on. He didn't know why. Something about it just bugged him, and whenever it rang he'd cover his ears, or bury it under a pile of clothes or a blanket until it stopped ringing. Eventually, he just turned the damn thing on silent, which meant he'd miss every time someone tried to call or text him. One of the reasons he and Maddie had drifted – she thought Colt was deliberately screening her calls; he just couldn't hear them come in.

That one was weirder. He doesn't know why he became so sensitive to the ring of the phone after Jeff died, what it was that set him off and made him remember Atlanta and Jeff and Juliette and falling and blood on the concrete and Maddie and _"Dad, dad, where are you? Dad? Dad! Please!"_

"Do you have a history of panic attacks?" the school nurse asked him, once, when he was sitting in class and his phone went off because he forgot to put it on silent and all of a sudden the chemistry classroom went grey around the edges and he couldn't breathe and when Dr. Agnew asked him to silence his phone, he had to ask Colt three times before asking one of the students to walk him to the nurse's office, and he had to stop in the hallway and bend over a trash can because he thought he might puke.

He told the nurse this had never happened before, which was a lie, because it happened twice. Just not in school. The first time, he was in line at Panera and his mother called. It was probably only loud enough for Colt to hear the ring, but at the time it took over the entire room and was like gunfire suddenly exploding in the restaurant. He abandoned his order on the counter to hide behind the store out by the dumpsters, trying to breathe into the fabric of his coat so he wouldn't choke on the stench of rotting trash.

The second time, he was with Maddie.

They were in her bedroom, and no one else was home. They had that big house to themselves, and they were trying to make the most of it.

Or at least, they would have, it Maddie's phone hadn't gone off in the middle of him unbuttoning her blouse, and all of a sudden he went from reaching for the condom in his pocket to on the floor of her bedroom with his head swimming, blood pounding in his ears so loudly that he could barely hear Maddie calling his name, her voice sounding far, far away even though she was kneeling right down beside him, touching his shoulder, her face pale and scared.

"Do I need to call someone?" she asked, her voice watery and afraid. "Do I need to get you something? Do you need help?"

He managed to talk her out of calling 911 –her parents would completely freak out if they knew Colt and Maddie were here alone – and just told her he was feeling sick, and it was probably best if they didn't do anything, in case he was contagious. She looked disappointed, which he didn't like, but more worried than anything else, which made him feel even sicker and made the pit in his stomach that had been growing since Atlanta seem like it would swallow him whole.

She let him lie down on her bed, brought him flat soda and Ritz crackers like her mom did when she was sick, and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing his hand and kissing him gently, ignoring his protest that she might get sick. It was the safest, warmest place he'd ever felt since that night on the tour bus, before Jeff, and it hit him that those two events would always be linked – one of the happiest moments with the girl he loved followed by the worst moment of his life, the secret he shared with Maddie that lit him up inside and the one that he kept from her that felt like he was turning to stone.

They broke up not long after that, and a heartbeat later, there was Leda and the party and Gabe growing inside her, and just like that he'd lost Maddie forever.

Leda has seen him that way only once. Gabe was a baby. He and Leda had no idea what to do with him or each other, so for now they lay on the floor of the Del Rosario's living room with their son, resting him on a baby blanket in between their two bodies. Each one had a little hand wrapped around one of their fingers, and when Gabe let out a sneeze that jolted his tiny body like an electric shock, Colt and Leda caught each other's eyes and smiled shyly, tentatively, like they were just meeting for the first time.

Then her phone rang.

He clutched his head in his hands and gasped, startling the baby and making him cry. Colt wanted to reach for him, but he was sinking into the floor, vision black and lungs on fire, twisting, shivering, drenched in sweat, rolling on the floor like he was on fire. Leda scooped up their son before Colt could roll onto him and crush him, and by the time she'd settled Gabe she looked more worried than pissed off.

Gabe will be in preschool before he's able to talk Leda about that moment, which has been burned into the back of his memory like a cattle brand. He won't mention Jeff by name or be able to explain why that ring set him off so badly, but she will understand, it's all connected. The way they were that day, on either side of their baby son, fingers clenched in his tiny hands. The way everything that has happened to them since the day they made Gabe has been connected to a night years and years and years ago, when a teenager drunk on expensive bourbon stood on a hotel balcony and watched a man's brains splattered to bits saving someone else's life, then swallowed that secret and let it rot his insides away because his father failed him.

 **VI.**

There's a number in his phone that's been there since before he moved out of Luke's house and went to live with his grandfather. He's changed the contact name to "CHINESE TAKEOUT" so whenever he has to make a call, scrolling through his contacts doesn't feel like a knife sinking into his ribs.

Sometimes, Colt finds himself staring at the number, wondering what would happen if he dialed. He's changed his phone number since he lived with Luke, but his dad can always star sixty-nine him, and if that didn't work, Luke has enough money to hire a private eye to track the phone number down and find out where his grandson lives. He's seen enough episodes of _Criminal Minds_ to know that anything's possible with technology.

Then he tells himself he's being paranoid, and scrolls past the fake name.

 **VII.**

He turns on the radio, and one of Luke's songs is playing.

He remembers being little, going out on the road with his dad and watching Luke sing this song to sold-out crowds a million times. It was one of his dad's oldest hits; a big chart-topper that hit number one on the country charts the year Colt was born. That song earned Luke his first CMA, his first GRAMMY nomination, and his first double-platinum record.

Back then, Luke would grab Colt and ruffle his hair, saying his son was better inspiration for a hit record than any heartbreak or bottle of Jack. He'd say that Luke only became successful after his firstborn came into his life, and being a father changed his entire world; now he knew what was important, what made him want to keep doing what he loved, and why he made music in the first place.

Colt slams his hand on the radio dial, so hard the knob leaves a mark in his skin. The car is silent except for the hum of the wheels under his feet, but he can still hear the song fading out in his ears.

 **VIII.**

It's a dark blue afternoon, winter turning everything darker, faster, and Gabe is running around with one of Leda's older brothers, home from college for a long weekend. Tahj picks the little boy up and flips him upside down, then turns him right side-up and throws him straight into the air.

Colt has to look away. He can't watch his son drop like deadweight through empty air like that.

Even if there's someone there to catch him.

When he opens his eyes, Gabe and Tahj are gone and Colt's mouth is dry, his hands slick with sweat. Outside, shadows have sunk in over the treetops. He tries to stand, and nearly falls face-first on the kitchen floor.

He's still standing at the table, gripping the edge with white knuckles, trying and failing to catch his breath when Gabe runs to his side. The little boy wraps his arms around Colt's legs, reaching for his daddy, wanting to be held.

Colt sits on the ground instead, wrapping his arms around Gabe's middle. He doesn't trust himself to hold his son; to hang onto him, and not let him fall to the ground.

 **IX.**

This one time, he was at a concert with Maddie.

They were standing in a sold-out crowd of people at Nissan Stadium, shoulder-to-shoulder with people drunkenly screaming the band's lyrics, and Maddie was howling along with them. He'd surprised her for their six-month anniversary with these tickets, and spent the whole show looking at her, and she looked so happy, so beautiful, and it made him feel happy. Peaceful. Like nothing in the world mattered as much as she did.

And since Atlanta, nothing did matter to Colt. Except for her.

She took his hand and pulled him close, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, her hair tickling his nose and chin, smelling like grease and heat and sweat and summer, and being pressed against her like that should have calmed him but a dull ache was starting to root in the back of his brain, so he blinked a few times and just tried to ignore it, his arms still around Maddie.

But then the guitar ripped into a skull-splitting solo and the drums bellowed along with it, and the whole night shook as the crowd roared around him, and his heart started racing faster than the music, his head spinning as the dull ache transformed, feeling like a bullet was lodged in his skull.

"Jesus Christ, that's loud."

He didn't know he'd actually said the words until Maddie turned to look at him. "What?" she screamed.

"I said it's really loud!" he shouted back, wincing at the jolt in his head.

Maddie looked confused. Maybe she couldn't hear him over all the noise. Or maybe she was just wondering why he was complaining about the volume. It was a concert; of course it was going to be loud.

He tried to take a deep breath and steady himself, but the person next to him accidentally brushed him with a stray arm, making Colt jump. Behind him and Maddie, two drunk girls yelled, and directly in front of them two heavyset guys cheered as the lead singer screamed into the mic and golden sparks shot out from the edge of the stage, lighting up the darkness.

It was almost violent – the lights and the smoke from the pyrotechnics curling in the night air, the smell of something burning, the volume, all those people screaming, so much screaming, all around him. It was like being in the center of a collision.

He couldn't breathe.

He couldn't get any air in his lungs at all, and his head was spinning, and his chest was on fire and he needed to get out of this crowd now, right fucking NOW. He had to get away from it all, or he'd die.

Colt tore loose from Maddie, and didn't look back to see whether she noticed or was calling after him. He pushed his way through the crowd, knowing they were protesting and cussing at him, but not caring, because he needed to RUN.

He ran and ran and ran and then he was out, away from the crowd. The night air was so hot and thick he felt like he could drown in it, and he staggered away from the stadium entrance, leaning against a low stone wall, trying to breathe deeply.

A security guard came over to him, his mouth a flat line.

"Something wrong, son?"

Colt tried to shake his head, but could barely stay standing. The cop probably thought he was drunk, or high. Underage. Up to no good. Needing some time at the police station.

He started to say something else to Colt, something he couldn't hear over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, but then there was a hand on his shoulder, soft and hesitant, and there was Maddie, bending down to look at him with an expression like she didn't recognize him at all.

"Colt?"

Her face looked so afraid. She was shaking, and so was he, and so was everything else around them, and he couldn't stand anymore so he sat on the curb, his head in his hands, unable to look at her.

The security guard asked her a question and she answered back, and he couldn't make out the conversation they had but apparently she said something that convinced the rent-a-cop she and Colt weren't delinquents out to make trouble, so the guy huffed away, his considerable girth jiggling with every step.

Colt kept his head in his hands as Maddie sat down beside him. Her hand touched his knee and she leaned close to him, her hair sweaty, cheeks damp.

"What happened in there?" she asked. Her grip in his knee tightened. "Colt, what happened?"

He doesn't know what to tell her. How can he explain hearing a single voice in that packed stadium full of people yelling? It didn't even make sense to him. Of course he'd never be able to pick out a single voice in that crowd.

But still.

He'd heard it. It rattled his skull and drowned out everything else, cutting through the screams of the concertgoers.

That one voice, howling in terror.

Who was screaming?

Maddie stared at him. She took her hand away from his knee, like touching him might cause an explosion.

"What are you talking about?" she said, her voice tight. "Colt, you're scaring me. Tell me what's wrong."

She waited for an answer, eyes wide. His hands were numb and he stared at them.

"I don't know," he whispered, and then he was crying, big gulping sobs that wracked his entire body and made his head feel like it would split open, made his chest ache and he couldn't stop, and Maddie wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, and he could tell she was crying too.

"What happened?" she kept asking, over and over and over, as they clung to each other on the curb. "Please, just tell me what happened."

 **X.**

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is the official, dressed-up name for it, and when Colt heard it the first time he figured the doc had to be looking at his chart wrong because that kind of disease wasn't for him. It was for combat veterans who thought a firecracker exploding was the onslaught of enemy fire; guys with amputated limbs who had watched buddies get their faces blown off right next to them; guys who saw IUDs buried under the ground in every step they took. It wasn't for some rich kid from the suburbs who had been to boarding school all his life, who had never seen a battlefield, who only knew war from what he studied in history class; a kid who always had the best of everything.

Except the therapist says that PTSD can be the result of any traumatic event, not just related to war, and asks Colt if witnessing Jeff's death and then being forced to keep his father's secret all these years might have been what caused his problems – the drugs, the drinking, the isolation, the fact that he only has a kid because he was looking to escape what was in his head, and Leda was the best of his options at that moment, the swiftest way to oblivion.

That makes him snort. Of course that's what caused the problems. God, his mom and stepdad are spending their money on this idiot? Who needs a couple hundred bucks lining their pocket to tell Colt what he already knows?

Except it stays with him, that idea, niggling at the back of his mind like a fly. And it stays there for the rest of that year, while he gets clean and gets it together, going to more visits to the shrink and doing a lot of talking he doesn't want to do. There are even some pills he hates taking, but they even things out a little – make the lows less low, fight back the shadows, make the changing tides of anger and sadness and guilt and frustration and hopelessness less likely to send him into a tailspin.

He's learning to open his eyes. To start seeing the world around him again, the one he's spent years hiding from.


	3. Chapter 3

**I.**

Maddie calls him one afternoon:

"Listen, it was great to see you the other day. I was wondering…did you want to maybe meet for coffee sometime? Catch up?"

There's something that sounds different about her. He can't put his finger on what it is, and thinks back to running into her (with boyfriend Hipster Tool). Conjuring her image up is as easy to him as breathing, as blinking, as remembering his own name.

He remembers the days after Atlanta, when that smile was the only thing he wanted. The only thing that shut off all the noise in his head, made him feel like he wasn't just floating out in space somewhere, watching the rest of the world and being completely separate from it. Whenever Maddie would look at him, he was wonderful, and it made him part of everything again. Like nothing had changed and nothing was bad and he never knew he could be hurt like this.

He remembers clinging to her, because she was the only thing that brought him peace. The only thing that calmed him.

He remembers how hard she tried to get him to talk about what had changed between them; how she said she was worried about him, how he didn't sleep and barely ate and seemed so spacey and far away, how he sometimes disappeared into his own head even when he was right next to her. How she said he scared her, sometimes, whenever he went away like that. Because it was like he became somebody else, not the person she knew and loved and wanted to be with.

He remembers how, when she begged him to tell her what was wrong, that she could fix anything, that she loved him more than anything else, she was crying too hard to breathe and he was crying too hard to breathe and she was pleading with him to talk to her and he was pleading with her not to go and leave him, and they were asking each other impossible things, and Deacon kicked him out of the house for hurting his daughter. And after they broke up, Colt felt like he'd been scooped out, like he was in pieces. He thought about running into traffic, lying down on railroad tracks, weighing himself down and diving into the river.

(Or maybe jumping off a building.)

Then there was the party and Leda and him missing Maddie, needing her so badly because she was the only thing that was good in his completely fucked-up life, the only thing that mattered to him anymore. And then there was Gabe, a line on a plastic pregnancy test and then a blob on a computer screen and a heartbeat thudding in his ears, proof that some part of Colt was alive, even when he didn't feel like it himself.

And then there was Gabe, in his arms and crying and needing Colt to protect him and feed him and take care of him for the rest of his life and he was so breakable and easy to hurt, and he'd never been more afraid in his life.

And then there were Leda's parents, blocking the door to their home, and Colt could hear Gabe crying inside as Leda tried to shush him, and Colt tried to get to the baby because his son needed him, but Leda's parents said he wasn't allowed inside, not like this, he wasn't allowed to see Gabe because he was too messed up. And he screamed and cursed and cried and begged, on his knees, begging to see him, and they gave him these looks that were more pitying than angry, and told him that when he got the help he needed, when they believed he was the kind of father Gabe needed, then he could be there for his son as much as he wanted.

He keeps thinking about Maddie, about what sounds different, and can't place it. Maybe it's just that they're older now; no longer teenagers in first-time-puppy-love, carrying the awkwardness of shy bodies and new experiences. Maybe what he's hearing is just Maddie-at-twenty-two versus Maddie-at-sixteen; older, more confident, a little bit hardened from experience.

He wonders if the changes in him are as easy to spot as the sound of his voice. And then thinks, of course they are. Isn't that how things started going off-track between them? After Jeff died, she could tell something was wrong, just by talking to him on the phone. Even before he went back to Nashville, she knew he was different. Even though he never told her about Atlanta, she still knew.

 **II.**

Leda tells him: _you don't know how it feels to have other people decide who you are._

Colt tells her: _you don't know how it feels to not trust yourself._

They are both right, and they are both wrong.

 **III.**

He remembers how his dad doubted him, because Colt had been drunk when he watched Jeff fall.

If only he'd managed to black out beforehand. That would have been really fucking convenient.

 **IV.**

"How did you hurt your hand?"

Colt tries to swallow, and when his throat sticks he takes a breath and tries not to gasp. The doc sits at his chair across the room, hands folded in his lap, watching Colt with an easy expression, as if they were discussing weekend plans.

Sirens. There were sirens coming from somewhere outside that night, when he hurt his hand. He remembers that. Because when he heard them in the distance, his mouth had gone dry, his hands unsteady.

Silence. Seconds drift by, the minutes, and Colt sits and stares at the lines in the rug, and the doc is just sitting there, and he looks like he could wait forever.

Leda has never gotten the story of Atlanta out of Colt. He's never talked about it with Maddie, Sage, his mother, any of his old friends. The army of shrinks his dad had sent him to see right after that night.

Luke is the only person Colt ever told about Jeff.

"I had one of them. A…freak-out, or whatever."

"A panic attack." The doctor says this dispassionately.

Colt's throat closes up. He can't look at the doc so he stares at the ground instead.

He goes back to that day. Leda was trying to coax Gabe into eating something. He was complained, loudly, for grilled cheese; every time Leda suggested something else, Gabe would scowl, beating his little fists against the counter and shouting, "girl cheese! I want girl cheese Mommy!"

There were sirens, and as they drew closer to Leda's house they were all Colt could hear. Gabe's whining and Leda's frustrated answers faded to a dull buzz in the back of his brain.

It was suddenly too hot in the kitchen with Gabe and Leda. Like the middle of July. He had to get out or he'd suffocate.

"Yeah. I had a panic attack."

Somewhere, Leda's voice had been calling for him. Colt remembers slamming the bathroom door behind him and leaning against the sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

He'd been so stunned by his reflection that it almost made him forgot the pain in his head. The person in the mirror looked nothing like him; patchy grey skin, drained of color except right under his eyes, where dark purple circles made the skin look sunken. His hair was greasy with sweat and his cheeks looked hollow, almost skeletal, and the whites of his eyes were red and wild, completely unfamiliar.

He looked like he'd washed up on shore after being in the water for a week. Like a body, not a person.

Except, not a body on the concrete. Not after a fall. Not after –

"I punched a mirror. Broke the glass."

Colt threw up in the sink. His head smashed against the porcelain rim of the bowl and it hurt like fucking Hell, but he barely noticed it when another wave of vomit came spewing out, like his gut was being turned inside out. He gagged and gagged, over and over, insides pouring out black, stinking rot into the Del Rosario's spotless bathroom sink. His head spun, everything swam, he was dribbling vomit down the front of his shirt, and then he had to do something, so he banged his fist into the glass mirror and watched it shatter around him, and the buzzing in his ears stopped, his heart stopped pounding in the base of his throat, the ringing in his head ended just as suddenly as it had begun.

He'd stared at his blood-soaked hand, bewildered. Why was his hand bleeding?

Colt had looked at the mirror, saw its shattered remains on the sink and on the floor at his feet. Then looked at his hand, blood pouring down his fingers and wrist and the length of his forearm. He couldn't connect the two, the shattered glass and his bloody fist.

Something tilted the world off-center, and it was a fucking terrifying feeling. For a moment, everything spun, and there were bright lights sparking in the corners of his eyes. Then he blinked, and everything turned grey.

He stared at his hand. It hadn't hurt at first, but now it hurt like hell.

Then –

Screaming.

"My kid saw it. So did his mom. It scared the shit out of them."

A voice high and terrified, breaking through the silent night sky. Someone losing their balance, someone who needed help, someone who was falling, falling, crashing…

"Colt!"

He blinked. The jarring sound of his own name snapped him out of whatever haze he'd been swimming in. He stared at his bloody hand, at the glass on the floor, and clarity hit him like a bolt of lightning – he'd put his own hand through the mirror, broken the glass with his fist.

Around him, the air was filled with the noise of screams.

Real screams, not ones he was hearing in the dark corners of his memory.

They were coming from his son.

Gabe looked at the blood – so much blood – pouring from the wound on Colt's hand, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. The little boy's face was streaked with tears, his eyes wide and terrified. He couldn't stop crying, and Leda looked like she was about to do that, herself. She swept Gabe into her arms, yelling at Colt, words he couldn't make out, then she ran down the hallway still carrying their son, her cries getting farther and farther away, but even with her gone he could still hear Gabe screaming like he was still standing in the little room, like he was yelling right in Colt's ear.

 _Where am I?_ He thought, in blind panic. _What am I doing here?_

He reached for the first thing he could get his hands on – something low and flat, like a table or countertop, and tried to get a grip.

Then everything went black.

The doctor leans towards Colt, his expression still that easygoing, friendly non-smile.

"What were you thinking, when you broke the glass? Did it scare you?"

Colt blinks, bringing himself back to the present. It feels like coming up for air after he's been submerged in very cold water. A migraine blossoms in his temple; it feels like he just got hit by a planet.

His head throbs. His throat is sandpaper dry, and when he tries to reach for the glass of water on the desk beside him, his hand shakes so badly he spills most of it on himself. He gulps down what's left and coughs when it slips down the wrong pipe.

"I didn't know what was happening," he says when he stops wheezing. He closes his eyes as that night comes over him again, all the panic and desperation and haziness, sirens and yelling and the tangy copper scent of his own blood, Gabe crying, Leda crying, the fear in their eyes. Everything around him fading as he passed out.

When he came to, Colt found himself lying in a heap on the freezing bathroom floor, staring up at the too-bright overhead light that hurt his eyes. His hand still bleeding, red marks streaked on his shirt, on the counter, on the floor, everywhere. Broken glass glittering like diamond dust all around him. Leda's ashen face, her red and swollen eyes, talking to her father in hushed tones down the hall.

"I felt like I was going crazy. I don't know why I did it. I just needed to do something, and the mirror was right there. So I punched it. It doesn't make sense, but I just saw it and needed to break it."

Her dad drove him to the emergency room. Colt didn't even try to talk his way out of it; once Mr. Del Rosario made up his mind, there was no changing it. Leda couldn't look at him as Colt slowly got to his feet, trying not to step on the broken glass or let his hand bleed all over everything. He caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, and the plain fear in her features made his stomach turn over.

That was the first night he talked about them. The attacks, for lack of better terms. He told the doctor about each time they'd happened, where he'd been and how he'd reacted. The concert with Maddie, that street busker, the night they were alone at her house. The time when Gabriel was a newborn, the summer afternoon Sage cut her foot. The times when he was in school, before his son was even born, and it suddenly felt as if all the air rushed out of the room.

For the first time since watching Jeff Fordham take that plunge off the roof, he talked.

"And you told the doctor about the night Jeff Fordham died?"

Colt's hands are slick with sweat. He can feel it slipping down his back, pooling at the base of his spine. It makes him shiver in the over-air conditioned office.

"Yeah. I told him."

He couldn't look at Leda's dad while he said this, but by the sharp inhales of the man's breath, Colt knew Leda's father couldn't believe what he was hearing. The doctor just looked somber as he took it all in, his gaze never wavering underneath his wire-rimmed glasses, nodding at certain parts and sometimes pursing his lips but never interrupting Colt as he told everything, the whole story, going back in forth in time, letting the entire night spill out of him piece by piece.

And he cried.

Because you can't hold back a truth so monumental it changed the way you look at the world and not weep when it finally comes out; when you realize how different your life could have been if you hadn't been carrying around that burden.

He cried, but nobody told him to stop. Nobody told him to keep it a secret.

 **V.**

A few days later, he meets Maddie at some trendy hipster coffee house downtown. Maddie picked it; he would rather just sit at a Starbucks somewhere, but she had to pick the non-chain that boasts "organic!" and "local!" and charges nine dollars for a latte.

Luckily, even with all the frou-frou fancy drinks on the menu he can't pronounce, they still have the one thing Maddie always ordered whenever they went to Starbucks together as teenagers. He orders it for her and gets nothing for himself, and watches as the barista writes her name as "MADY".

"I can't believe you still remember that," she says, as the barista hands her the cup.

Colt shrugs. "I never forgot it."

She gives him a look he can't decipher. He wonders, briefly, if she's still with the Hipster Tool he met at the park that afternoon, but he doesn't ask and she doesn't say.

"You wanna sit down?" she asks.

It takes a few sips of coffee before they start to talk, slowly, about things on the periphery of heartbreak. Daphne's in her last year at Langhorne. She isn't going to college, opting instead to finally tour full-time with Maddie as a Highway 65 artist. It was something the girls weren't allowed to do until they were both done with school, as per their mother's rule.

Colt remembered vividly much Maddie hated that rule; how hard she tried to get her mother to back down from it, how many blow-out arguments they had over the issue of Maddie wanting to advance her own career against her mother's wishes.

When she was eighteen, she and her mom had this big argument where Maddie told her mom she was an adult and Rayna couldn't control her anymore, threatening to run away and break her contract with Highway 65 and never speak to Rayna again.

Colt also remembers being eighteen as the year he got Leda pregnant.

Maddie remembers that, too, and it's so awkward for a moment, she takes a couple slurps of her drink and pretends to be absorbed in the design on the cup.

It's his turn now, and he's careful not to mention Leda or his son. Instead, he tells her that Sage graduated from high school a few weeks back, and instead of going to college in the fall she's moving to New York City so she can attend this prestigious dance academy. She's going to spend this summer in Paris, training with this world-famous instructor for some super-exclusive camp –only a few kids in the entire world get picked to train with this guy, and she had to do tons of auditions in New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles before they finally accepted her. She's leaving in a few weeks and their mother is frantic, thinking that it's going to be just like _Taken_ and that her mother will have to find Liam Neeson and his very specific set of skills if she wants to bring Sage back to the US in one piece.

Maddie tells him that before she and Daphne hit the road this summer, they're going to open for Emmylou Harris when she plays two sold-out shows at the Ryman Auditorium. After that, they're off to sing for the president's son and his new bride on their wedding day, and then they're going to California to sing at some huge country music festival out there. And as soon as the tour winds down they're back in the studio, working on their second album. She's nervous about this – their first one was released with rave reviews, and she's afraid whatever they do next can't live up to expectations.

"You don't need to worry," he tells her. "It's going to be perfect. You and Daphne always are. It's impossible for you to fail at anything."

Maddie smiles, but not like she's convinced, and Colt feels for a moment like he's talking to a stranger.

And maybe that's what they are, now. She's some girl he had sex with when they were just kids, in the back of his dad's tour bus. He loved her and she loved him and they were each other's firsts, and it was sweet and fumbling and awkward and a little scary but mostly it felt good, felt right. He didn't think anything had felt right like that since he was that kid in love. The kid who had never seen somebody's brains blown apart by concrete, and then watched his dad lie to the whole world about it.

"Your little boy is really cute," she says, and they've reached the untouchable topic at last. "His name's Gabe?"

Colt nods, fiddling with the sugar packets stacked on the table. "Yeah. That's my little guy."

"What is he, now? Three?"

He thinks Maddie's just asking to be polite. She has to remember how long it's been.

"Yeah. Almost four. Soon."

It surprises him to say that. It seems impossible that his son has gotten this old, this fast.

"And are you and his mom, still –"

"No. Leda's not my girlfriend. We're just…parenting."

He shakes his head. "Sorry. It sounds weird to explain it. I don't really know how. We just…we're friends, I guess is the word. Except we have a kid together."

There it is, and he can see in the way Maddie withdraws her hands into her lap and fiddling with her phone, that he's stepped over some invisible line. Except this is his life now, Leda and Gabe and him, and he can't tiptoe around it for Maddie's sake just because she doesn't like to remember how things ended when they were just kids.

He was right, to think they were strangers. Strangers who met because a million years ago before either of them was ever born, both their dads fell in love with the same woman. They both wanted to marry her. They both wanted forever with her.

Which her father got, and his didn't.

For Luke's troubles, he got a broken heart, a long string of nameless hook-ups, all-night parties that turned into all-day hangovers, and a career that skyrocketed to a whole new level – it only cost him his children.

And his grandson.

If Luke and Deacon hadn't fallen into this whole doomed-from-the-start mess of wanting forever with Rayma Jaymes, Colt and Maddie never would have met. Never almost been brother and sister, never almost been a real family.

Never been each other's first kiss, first boyfriend and girlfriend, first love.

Not for the first time, it strikes him how incredibly weird and twisted that whole situation was.

"Listen," he says, and Maddie looks at him, eyes wide and questioning, "Back when….back when we were together, and everything got weird…I'm sorry if I ever scared you. Or if I ever made you afraid of me."

He stares at his hands. They're slick with sweat, cold as two blocks of ice.

"I was really screwed up back then," he murmurs. "And I didn't treat you like I should have, and I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve any of it. You were the best thing in my life, and I hurt you so badly. I just want you to know how sorry I am."

The restaurant seems to dim around them, the noise of chatter and footsteps and plates clanging together and the roar of the kitchen behind them all dulling into a faint buzz. Now, it's just him and Maddie, staring at each other across a greasy tabletop in the corner of some dark hipster coffee house.

She reaches a hand out for his. It's so warm, it sends a jolt right through his frozen fingers.

He hasn't touched her in almost five years.

Her hand feels the same.

"I was never afraid of you," she tells him, squeezing his hand. "I was afraid of what was going on. You just…completely shut me out of everything, and I had no idea why. Everything changed so fast, and you never explained what happened. I thought it was all my fault. Like I did something wrong, and you never told me."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Colt says. "My dad, he just wanted me to act like everything was normal, and I couldn't. And even when we stopped talking and I didn't care anymore, I still felt like I had to keep everything bottled up."

He can't take his eyes off their fingers intertwined. She has cheap mood rings on almost every finger of both her hands, like she raided a gumball machine for everything it had. When they were together, she hardly wore jewelry at all – usually just a necklace, a silver chain her grandfather had given her that used to belong to her grandmother, and she rarely took off. Now her rings are covered in discolored metal, and instead of that thin silver chain he remembers so well, she has a heavy-looking string of black beads around her neck that gleam red when the overhead lights catch their reflection off the dark surface.

"Some part of me felt like it was my fault I felt this way. Like I deserved to feel hurt. And I felt like I didn't deserve you, even though you were the only thing that mattered at all."

Maddie is still holding his hand.

"I loved you so much," she whispers, her eyes wet.

Colt has to swallow a few times before he form the words. "I loved you, too."

Maddie looks less hurt now, more like completely confused, and Colt realizes he never answered her actual question. Why things changed so much between them; what happened that was so horrible, it turned him into someone neither of them recognized.

He doesn't know how to explain it, and that's the truth.

All he wanted his dad to do was tell the truth and let the world know what really happened to Jeff that night on the rooftop when Colt was sixteen. But Luke never did, and Colt never did, either. He was so angry at his dad for lying, but he never told the truth himself.

He should have, but he didn't.

He could have gone to the police. He could have gone to the media. He could have stood on that same hotel rooftop and screamed it to the entire world. He could have posted it on the internet, papered the world with posters. He could have done _something._

Why didn't he?

"I'm sorry you couldn't tell me," Maddie says finally, and hearing her words is like coming up for water in a deep, dark pool. "Did you tell someone else? Get any help?"

He nods. "I had to. Leda's parents said if I didn't get it together, they'd take Gabe away from me."

Maddie considers this.

"And are things better now?"

He stares at her.

"You can still tell me," she whispers. "If you think it will help. We're not kids anymore; you don't need to listen to your dad."

They face each other over the table, and for a moment, there's nothing but a long silence between them, punctured only when a waiter comes by and asks if they're ready to order.

"Just try," Maddie tells him, when the waitress leaves. "Try and talk to me. I want to help."

Colt opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. He takes his hands from Maddie's, folds them in his lap. Looks at the impossibly cheesy faux retro wall decorations above his head, and makes his decision.

"I can't." He slides out of the booth, keys in hand. "I have to go."

He looks back at her, silent and frozen in her chair.

Once upon a time, she was the person he loved most in the world. Then she became the person he hurt the most, and the person whose trust he broke forever. The person who depended on him, and he failed to be who she'd believed him to be.

Maybe he and his father do have something in common, after all.

"I'm sorry," he tells her, and that's for everything that's happened since he watched Jeff fall. Whether it includes her or not.

 **VI.**

She isn't surprised.

Colt thought he'd kept everything a secret from her, all those years, but he didn't understand.

Leda knew.

Jeff, Luke, Colt, Maddie, Gabe, her, Atlanta…all of it, connected as a bloodline, impossible to untangle.

She always knew.

When he asks her how, she looks at him and says, "Your dad told me."

 **VII.**

They've been in contact with each other since Gabe was a baby. Leda got his number from Sage, and made his sister swear not to tell Colt.

"He asks about you. Always about you. And Gabe. I sent him pictures."

Colt isn't sure which part makes him angriest – that she's talking to his father, that she kept it a secret all this time, or that Luke is this much closer to seeing the grandson Colt tried so hard to keep him away from, for Gabe's own sake.

"He knows where we live now," Colt tells her. "He could come by any time with a whole entourage and want to see Gabe. He doesn't care about us; he just cares about his image. He'll turn it into this big moment to make himself look good, because that's all he cares about! That's what he does, Leda! He just uses people, and doesn't care who he hurts!"

"He promised he wouldn't come unless you asked him to," she says, narrowing her eyes. "Your dad isn't interested in some big TV moment. He misses you and wants to see Gabe."

"Which you're not going to let him do."

She puts her hands on her hips. "He's my son, too, in case you forgot."

"And he's _my_ father! You had no right to go behind my back and lie to me about it! How do I know you didn't let him see Gabe without me already?"

"Don't shout at me!"

"Why not? You LIED to me, Leda! You've BEEN lying to me all this time! How am I supposed to trust anything you say from now on?"

Colt turns his back on her, shaking his head. He needs to calm down, so he digs his nails into his palms and tries to think about what that shrink told him, if he felt a panic attack about to sneak up on him: breathe in through the nose, hold it, let it out slowly, repeat. Over and over again, breathe in, breathe out, slow and steady.

It's stupid shrink-talk, but it does help, a little. When he turns back around, Leda's face is pink, her expression defensive.

"Look, I shouldn't have kept your dad a secret. But he promised this would be on your terms, if you ever wanted to see him." She sighs. "He really wants to see you and Gabe. That's all he talks about."

"Yeah, well, you don't know the real Luke Wheeler."

"Maybe. Maybe not. People change, Colt."

Colt frowns. "And sometimes, they don't."


	4. Chapter 4

**I.**

Back at his father's ranch, there's a creek about a mile away from the stable where rocks form a bridge you can step across, if the water's low enough. In the summer, when there's hardly any rain, you can stand right in the middle, and the water will barely be more than a puddle underneath the stones. It smells like salt and dead fish and sweat and an earthier, loamier scent, something more personal.

In the spring, when the rainy season comes, the stones are almost covered by the rushing water, and the current is surprisingly strong. If you wade in, you could find yourself up to your waist in freezing water that could drag you down if you aren't careful.

That's what Luke told him, when he was young. When his father spent more time at home than on the road. When he was there when Colt would come home from school. When his parents were together and he was too small to understand what they fought about behind closed doors. When Sage was a baby who followed him everywhere on chubby legs, driving him crazy imitating everything Colt did and said, always begging to play with him and crying when he said no. When his dad would leave in the middle of the night and his mother would be in the kitchen crying, where she didn't think the kids could hear.

Those were the days when he and Colt used to go riding in the meadow after school; the days when Luke still made time for things outside his career. They'd ride past that creek, and Colt would see the water rushing through the small stripe cut into sprawling green farmland. Sometimes it was brown and dusty, and sometimes, when the water level was very low, it looked red, bloody, Biblical. And sometimes, after a rainy few days when he could hear the water before he saw it, they'd ride the horses past the edge and watch the narrow water glimmer silver and gold in the sunlight, blinding them with the reflection of the sun.

As they turned away from the creek bed and headed back towards the barn, the creek would become obscured by a thicket of trees and undergrowth, thorns and wild honeysuckle and poison oak. But the rush of the water would still be a low hum buzzing in his ears.

Long after Luke stopped taking him for those after-school rides in the meadow, he brought Maddie to that creek for a surprise picnic. It was almost summer, too hot to lie in the sun for too long, and the creek was full from the rainy season. They took off their shoes and smiled at each other shyly, still feeling their stomachs twist with nerves as Maddie stripped to her bra and panties while Colt took off his shirt and kicked his shorts aside. They waded into the water that came just above their knees, hidden by the trees and wildflowers, protecting them from the sun and the eyes of anyone who might have been able to see them holding onto each other in the glimmering water.

The way she leaned into his hold, head on his chest and hair tucked under his chin, damp with sweat and creek water, his arms pulled around her waist and his eyes closed as the water winds around them slowly, it made everything stop. The sound of the water, the chatter of the woods, the rustling of deer and rabbits and squirrels and whatever else might be roaming through the undergrowth all stops. The only thing that existed was her, with him. Fingers entwined, the smell of the creek coming off of them, that same salty, earthy smell, like sweat and skin and where it meets.

"I love you," he breathed into her hair, hot from the sun on his lips.

Maddie leaned into his hold.

"I love you, too," she murmured.

They stood there for a moment, holding onto each other in the shallow bank, when Colt rested his cheek against hers and closed his eyes.

"I love you more than anything," he said. "I've never loved anything as much as I love you. You're the only thing that matters in my life anymore."

Maddie shifted, tilting her head up to look at him. A smile was tugging across her face, but it was different, this time. Almost hesitant.

Colt tucked her damp hair behind one ear, hands cradling her face. She was still giving him that smile, so he asked, "What? Is something wrong?"

It was a moment before she nodded, when she looked down at the ground and then made her eyes meet his.

"Are you happy?" she asked quietly.

He blinked, surprised. He'd half-expected her to say something about needing space, or needing time apart, needing anything that wasn't him.

"Are you kidding? I'm happy right now. I'm always happy with you."

Maddie frowned.

"What about without me?" she asked, her voice still barely above a whisper.

He let go of her face and looked at her. She couldn't meet his eyes.

"What's this about?" he asked. "Did my dad say something to you, or what?"

Maddie frowned. "No. Why would he?"

Colt shook his head. "Then what's wrong? Are you mad at me, or something?"

"No. Colt, I'm not mad."

"Then what's the problem?"

"Nothing!" She shook her head. "Look, could you just forget I said anything?"

"No, I really can't. What's the matter?"

"Nothing!" she repeated, and this time she looked ready to cry. Colt backed off, chastened, and looked away as Maddie wiped her eyes with the back of one wet hand.

"It's just," she says, not meeting his eyes, "you don't act like you anymore. It's like something's different. Like you're never happy."

He took her hand. "What are you talking about? I'm happy with you. Right here. Now."

"Yeah," she said, squeezing his fingers, "but what about later on? Without me? Are you happy then?"

Colt sighed, and there it was on the tip of his tongue, everything he kept locked away because of Luke.

He could tell her, right now, and things might turn around. No more nightmares. No more guilt. No more jumping when the phone rang, no more unexplained headaches, no more feeling so angry at his dad that sometimes he could barely stand to be in the same room as Luke, much less live under the same roof.

He put his arms around her waist.

"I'm happy," he murmured into her hair, and he felt her relax the slightest bit. Her hands wound around his neck, and he tugged her closer, bending down to meet her lips.

Maddie was the one good thing he had left. He wasn't about to ruin that by dragging her into this mess. He'd never forgive himself for that.

 **II.**

"He's never seen Gabe; I swear."

"Excuse me if I don't believe that."

There's an edge to his voice they both hear, and Leda holds his gaze for a beat before dropping back down to the cutting board. They haven't talked about it, but the secret she kept about talking to Luke sits in the air between them. Colt is still angry with her, and she still won't apologize.

"You know, he isn't the monster you remember."

"Because you've known him all of five minutes."

"Almost five years," she corrects, eyes blazing. "He knows he messed things up with you. He's trying to change."

Colt snorts. "Yeah, well, tell him good luck."

"You changed," Leda says, her voice quiet but firm. "You're not the same person you used to be. Why can't you believe that about him? Why is it so hard to believe he's changed?"

Colt puts his hands on his hips. "Look, I know you think you're helping, but I know my dad better than you. And I don't want to forgive him. All he cares about is dancing around onstage, making people love him. He doesn't know how to do anything else."

"How do you know if you haven't spoken to him in so long?" Leda counters, and Colt groans. This conversation could go in circles forever.

"You can't talk to him ever again."

Leda's eyebrows shoot up. "Excuse me? I can't? You can just tell me what to do like that?"

"When it's my family, yes I can."

"So _my_ son isn't your family." Her voice is pure ice.

Colt glares at her.

" _Our_ son is the most important part of my family," he spits out. "Which is why you can't talk to my dad. Because he's only going to hurt Gabe in the long run."

"He doesn't want it to be this way! Can't you at least try with him?"

"After everything he's done, no!"

Leda opens her mouth to reply, but he cuts her off, unable to stop. "You don't get to do this! You don't get to talk about my dad like you know him!"

He throws his hands in the air. "You LIED to me, Leda! You know how I feel about my father! You completely betrayed my trust, and I have never, ever done that to you. I have never gone behind your back and done something I _knew_ would hurt you, and you fucking do this?"

Colt turns and stomps away, still seething.

Behind him, he hears Leda dissolving into tears. Somewhere in the house, Gabe is crying. All the fury drains out of him by the time he opens the front door and makes it to his car.

He sits behind the wheel and cries, his vision blurring the road like a rain-covered windshield. His hands shake so badly it takes him several tries to get the key in the ignition.

 **III.**

How do you mourn the living?

Sometimes, Colt thinks it would be easier if his father was dead.

Not that he wants his dad to die. It's just that, in a lot of ways, Colt's life would be easier if it was true.

At least then, he'd know what to say when people asked him about his dad. There would be a certain way he was expected to behave. He would wear black, mourn, remember the good times with the rose-colored glasses people used when talking about the dead.

But how do you grieve if they're still out there? How can you be so angry and hurt and have it get all mixed up with love and need and it's all so strong it could bring you to your knees?

"What's the last good thing you remember about your dad?" Leda asked him once, when they were at his mother's house. She was chopping peppers at the kitchen counter, dumping the slices into a glass bowl where she was making some kind of salad. Colt was watching her; something about watching her cook made him believe she was much older than he was.

She sounded worried when he took so long to answer, and Colt wished he could tell her that she didn't need to be afraid of how he'd react, like a bomb or a trigger. But he would have a hard time making her believe it; their history was made up of moments where he wasn't focused on the present because he was lost in the past.

Lately, though, he'd realized those moments when he spaced out were more about the future. A college fund for Gabe. A degree for Leda, who is enrolling at MTSU for the fall semester. A career for himself as an EMT, because he's decided that he wants to do something that matters, that makes a difference in people's lives. If he can't change what happened in Atlanta or what happened right after, he will focus all the energy he used to waste feeling angry and hopeless and lost, and channel it into something that puts some good back into the world.

Colt thinks it's the least he can do, although he feels a little silly, trying to bargain with karma. But he spent so many years believing he had no future that it makes him want to work that much harder to make something of himself. Not just for his son, but for himself, because there are people in his life that are counting on him to be a better man.

But Leda would take longer to believe in him, and that day of the picnic at his mother's, she still didn't. As much as he wanted her to see he'd changed, he knew better than anyone that trust takes a lifetime to build, and an instant to shatter.

"I told you," he said to her. "My dad was on the road most of the time. And when he came home, he mostly just fought with my mom and spent all day riding horses on the ranch. After they split, I only saw him on holidays."

Leda nodded. Colt waited for more questions, but thankfully, she seemed to let it go, chopping the last of the peppers into the bowl. Her hands were slick with seeded orange pulp, but she still cut each piece steadily and expertly. It reminded him of Granddad, his hands covered in slick oil and engine grease under the hood of his truck, his weathered hands manipulating the wires and gears as deftly as paintbrush strokes.

"He took me swimming," Colt said, not sure where it came from, but as soon as he told her that the memory came back to him:

His dad holding his arms up to Colt, who is standing on the dock of the lake at the ranch. He's peering down at the water beneath him with wary eyes. He doesn't like the water; it's brown and filled with _things_ – fish and plants and snakes and who knows what else – and he can't see the bottom, so who knows, he could jump in and fall all the way down through that darkness and maybe never reach the bottom.

But Dad keeps his arms reached out, and urges Colt to come in.

"The water's fine, buddy," he says. "You're going to be okay. I promise. Nothing's gonna get you in here."

Little Colt – he was probably around five or six, he guesses – frowns at his dad.

"But what if I fall in?" he asks.

Instead of answering, Luke swims closer to the dock, right to the edge. He reaches his arms up and hauls himself onto the wooden platform, water sluicing off his body. Then he squats in front of Colt and leans in close, so the world is made up of only the two of them.

"Bud," he says, his voice low and serious, "I promise you, I got ya. Okay? I'll hold on real tight, and you're not gonna get hurt. I won't let go unless you tell me to."

Luke's hair is dark from the water, curling around his ears and forehead. On his forearm Colt can see the tattoo his father got when Sage was a baby, right next to the one he had done when Colt was born.

His father told him and Sage the tattoos were his way of keeping their family close. They meant his kids would always be with him, even if he was far away on the road. He said that whenever he felt like giving up, all he had to do was look at the ink on his arms to know they were the reason he did all of this, the traveling and the touring and the being gone.

"I'm not gonna let you fall," Luke tells him, and this time, when he's in the water holding out his arms, the tattoos rippling across his skin like light on the lake water, Colt takes a deep breath and jumps off the dock, and he's only airborne for a split second before Luke's arms are around him, holding his head above the water, keeping Colt anchored to something strong and steady, just like Dad promised he would.

Which Dad is his real father? The one who would go horseback-riding all over the ranch with Colt, talking about nothing while the sun went down? The one who taught him how to shoot skeet in the empty field at the far edge of the property, the one filled with wildflowers and where you could catch a perfect glimpse of the sunset? The one who taught him how to swim by holding Colt against his waist and swimming in the lake on the edge of their farm, whispering the whole time that it was okay, everything would be okay, he was safe, Daddy had him, Daddy wouldn't let anything bad happen to him?

Or is it the one who came at Colt with a fist raised? The one whose career was more important to him than telling the truth, or having any sense of integrity, or even being a decent parent? The one Colt could never trust again?

Colt guesses the answer is both. But it's practically impossible to wrap his head around.

 **IV.**

"Do you think your father should have protected you?"

The shrink stares at Colt across the table, his expression curious.

Colt blinks.

"From what? From seeing Jeff fall?"

The doc shrugs. "Is that what you think?"

Shrinks; God, would someone please spare Colt from the psychobabble and their wild theories. He isn't here to make them feel like he's some puzzle, or a guessing game. He's here for one reason – because the court and Leda's family both say so. If he stops seeing the shrink, he doesn't get to see his son.

Colt shifts in his spot on the couch. He stares at the old-lady carpet again, then his eyes trail to the side table in the corner, with a little brass elephant statue on top. God, what was with all the horrible decorations? Did this guy rob an old folks' home or something?

The doctor is still waiting for Colt. Infinitely calm. Infinitely patient.

Did he think Luke should have protected him?

Before Jeff died, he was angry at his dad because Luke was never around. Watching football, playing video games, riding horses in the meadow on the edge of the Wheeler ranch, eating junk food his mother would never allow in her own house, going on long drives through the country with all the windows rolled down and music turned up – all of that had faded around the time Colt was about eight or nine. After that, his dad was too busy for most things. Always on tour, always a single to promote, an album to sell, an awards show to attend. Filming commercials, going on talk shows, bouncing on private jets between one coast and the next.

And there was always someone. Rayna. Gabriella. Or something. Like the Brand.

Never Colt. Never Sage.

"No," he says, and the answer surprises him because it never crossed his mind to say that. "It's not like it was his fault Jeff died."

He's even more surprised to realize that he actually does feel that way. Colt blinks a moment, feeling like the world tilted sideways and he's lost his equilibrium completely.

"But you do blame him," the doctor says.

Colt stares at the same ugly-ass rug he looks at, every single time he comes in here. It makes no sense to him, but somehow he expects the drooping petals to be able to reach each other, to somehow close the gap between them and stay clinging to the branches.

He blames Luke for the lies about Atlanta. The reasons his father had for hiding the truth. For not believing Colt in the first place, and then forcing him into silence that ate away at his life until it cost Colt everything. He blames him for letting Jeff's family think their son killed himself; blames him for letting Layla Grant think her boyfriend killed himself and letting her feel guilty for reasons that weren't even true. He blames him for letting Juliette Barnes get away with…if not murder, than something close enough to it. And then getting to walk away from it and go back to her family, her husband and her daughter, and live her life as if nothing had happened.

He's been angry at Luke for years, but not because of Jeff.

Because Luke never seemed to know what mattered.

"I blame him," he says slowly, turning the words over in his head, "for not being the person he says he is. He has no idea what's really important because he believes in his own hype. He lies and gets away with it, and keeps doing what he wants, hurting people, and it doesn't matter to him. Being a good person, it's not important. It doesn't make him a celebrity. And I blame him for being that way."

"For failing you," the doctor says.

Colt can't look at him. He has the terrible knowledge that if he does, he is going to start crying, and he promised himself a long time ago he would not cry in this office, in front of a shrink, like this was some melodramatic primetime soap opera.

The doctor regards Colt, patient as ever.

"You loved your father," he says. "You needed him. You believe, as a parent, that he should always protect you and do what's right for you. But your dad put himself first. He violated your belief of who he was. And that's what hurts, more than anything. That he couldn't love you the same way you loved him."

 **V.**

This one time, he and Leda were lying in the grass.

It was the middle of a hot summer afternoon, and Gabe was just learning how to walk. He'd been fussy all afternoon in the stifling humidity, so finally they took the cranky, damp baby out to the yard, turned on the hose, and teased him with it. At first he seemed completely baffled by the sudden cold torrent, then a little upset, but when Colt scooped him up and swung him up and down while Leda put her finger over the hose opening and misted them with water, he started giggling, and the tears he'd been crying just moments ago were replaced with squeals of delight. Gabe and Colt ran around bare-chested while Leda changed into a bathing suit, and they yelped and darted and sprayed each other until the sun was at its highest and their shadows made ambitious leaps across the dead yard and the dust that coated the shimmering July air underneath their feet became soft and slick.

The heat and the running around tired Gabe out quickly, and when the boy started becoming more interested in sitting in the muddy grass and whining for someone to pick him up, they dried him off and put him in fresh pajamas, and by the time they set him down for his afternoon nap his eyes were so heavy he didn't even fuss. He dropped off almost instantly with his arms splayed out over his head, one fist splayed open with the fingers fanning out and the other clenched in a chubby fist, like he was hanging onto something in his dreams.

It reminded Colt of when he and Sage were little, back when his parents were still together and his mom took them out on the road, and they would have to share a bed on the tour bus. There was a couch built into the wall that folded down into a mattress, and that was where Colt and Sage would sleep side-by-side every night. Their father would take the stage after their bed time, and right before he headed backstage he'd kiss both of them goodnight, putting his lips to their foreheads and telling them to be good for their mama.

Colt never could sleep away from home, and even with his sister and his mother so close by he still felt like he was drifting on an island somewhere, marooned far from everything familiar as he tried to fall asleep on a tour bus parked in some huge stadium lot out in the middle of nowhere. But Sage could turn off like a light where they were, and she'd drop off into heavy sleep almost immediately, her arms tossed over her body and her hands clenched into fists, like she was wrapping around something and trying her hardest not to let go.

She breathed so fast, too. Hot and damp, right on his cheek, and uneven, like she was running in her dreams. Gabe breathed that way lying in his crib, his little chest rising and falling rapidly. Colt felt the warm breath coming from his son's mouth with the back of his hand, then smoothed back his still-wet hair.

"Don't wake him up," Leda whispered to him, when she saw him brush Gabe's curls. "Let's get out while we still can."

They tiptoed out of the bedroom and back out to the yard, rolling up the hose and setting it back against the side of the house. Then Leda collapsed into a heap on the wet ground, sighing as she threw her arms over her face to shield herself from the sun.

"It needs to rain," she mumbled. "It's so gross out."

Colt lay down beside her, far enough away that there wasn't a chance they could accidentally brush against each other.

"We could go to the pool," he suggested.

Leda sighed. "Too many annoying twelve-year-old boys there. They cannonball right on top of you and hog the high-dive. And it's too crowded, anyway."

"It is that," he said, not sure why he was answering with something so inane, and then figuring it didn't matter, his head was spinning a little, and when he opened his eyes the world seemed to tilt around him, the clouds cartwheeling past him across a blue that looked drained of color, the sky bleached bone-white, like the blazing midday sun had managed to wilt all the color away.

He closed his eyes, breathed in. He could smell onion grass, clover. Leda's suntan lotion. Sweat. The mud-spattered earth that was rapidly drying underneath their bodies. And heat – sour and dusty and suffocating and thick, coating the insides of their noses and the backs of their throats, gritty and done-dry.

He put his hands into fists and squeezed tightly. His son and his sister always slept hard, dreamed hard, held on tightly. To what? What did they see in their dreams that they had to clutch onto?

He takes another deep, dry breath, sucking in the air. It smells like the world around him is burning, except for Leda, and her tropical, sweet smell.

He steals a glance at her. She's still got her arms tossed over her head, covering her eyes. If he moves his hand a few inches, he could reach her, but he closes his eyes and stays lying where he is, surrounded by things being scorched under the sun and that tropical smell that feels so close, like it's a part of him.

Before Gabe was born, Leda told Colt she'd read somewhere that mothers could identify their babies just by their smell. Colt thought it was all sappy Hallmark movie BS; babies smelled like milk and powder and shit, and not much else. He forgot all about those words in the chaotic first weeks with a newborn, until one night he heard the baby screaming and Leda was either asleep or pretending to be, and he decided she needed her rest so he got up and plucked his son out of the crib and started to walk the halls with him, trying to shush Gabe while he whimpered and sobbed and dribbled on Colt's baby-stained t-shirt.

He walked with the boy tucked under his chin and could smell the milky, soft scent coming off of him, like smoke curling off a fire. Except this was damp and slightly sour and unbelievably soothing, and after a few minutes of walking the hallways he could feel the baby calming down by degrees, and Colt was calmed along with him, the warm baby smell of him like a drug. When Gabe was finally asleep, Colt stood over him a moment to watch him, trying to inhale that same scent. It calmed some part of him he hadn't realized needed soothing.

After that, he knew that smell meant _Gabe._ Meant _son._ Meant _mine_.

(He wondered if Luke had a smell he could always tell was Colt, then figures, probably not. Luke Wheeler wasn't the 'get up with a screaming baby in the middle of the night' type. Just like he wasn't much of a 'stick around and be a father' type.)

Maddie, he remembered, smelled like vanilla and lemons. Like the color yellow. She wore perfumes and body sprays and lotions and he'd always loved to inhale her, especially after Atlanta. Because the closer he was to her and the more he took her in, the quieter those dark, growling spaces of his memories would become.

Leda was different. Earthier, and sweet. But a more natural sweet, like honeysuckle and damp earth and rushing water; like salt and grit and the ripples of heat that shimmered off the ground in the hottest days of summer. He could pick that scent out in total darkness; find her even with his eyes closed. He didn't have to touch her to know she was near. It was familiar, and comforting.

He wondered when that had happened. When being around her felt like something good.

 **VI.**

He and Leda are on shaky ground after their fight, so he's been spending the past couple days at his mom and stepdad's place until he's sure they won't have another blowout. Now he's sitting in his old bedroom, in the same bed he slept in when he was sixteen and needed to leave his father behind, looking at relics from his teenage years (the pre-Atlanta ones, anyway).

He said goodnight to Gabe before he left, and because he couldn't get up and walk away when his son still wanted him close, Colt got into the narrow kid's bed with him until Gabe drifted off. When Colt untangled himself from his Gabe's small arms, he could see his son's eyes moving under their closed lids in a dream Colt couldn't see but must have been pleasant, because he looked peaceful.

(Colt doesn't dream, except when he has nightmares, and while they have become much less frequent than they have since the years right after Atlanta, he doesn't think he'll ever be rid of them entirely.)

It's the middle of the night and everyone else is asleep, but Colt scans his finger over his list of contacts, hovering over one in particular.

The last text message he has from that number is from almost three years ago. Before that there were a slew of messages that came in every couple of days:

 _Hey kid, just checking in._

 _Hey son, driving through Virginia for a tour stop, wondering if you wanted to say Hi_

 _Just missing you, bud. Good night._

 _Hi bud. I played for some troops on a base in Kentucky today and thought of you. One soldier brought his little boy to the show. He looked like you._

 _Miss you, bud. You were a happy little kid. Always laughing._

 _I love you son. Good night._

He stares at the messages for a long time, reading it over and over again. For some reason, reading those last two sentences – _I love you son. Good night._ – makes him feel tired somewhere deep inside.

(It's a little late for that, Luke.)

 **VII.**

Colt says: _You don't understand._

Leda says: _You don't understand._

They are both right, and they are both wrong.

 **VIII.**

"You've got a lot on your mind today," the doc observes.

It takes every ounce of Colt's willpower to not roll his eyes. This is what his mom and stepdad are spending a small fortune on?

"You've treated a lot of patients, right?" he asks.

The shrink leans back in his chair. "Well, I've been in practice for almost thirty years, so, yes. I would say so."

Colt focuses on the rug with the flower petals, threaded forever in suspended animation, the moment before they drift to the earth.

"So after listening to people talk to you about their problems all day, do you believe that people can change?"

"People in general?" the doctor says. "I'm not sure. That's a loaded question."

Colt frowns. "Thirty years as a head-shrinker and you really don't have an answer?"

The doctor quirks one eyebrow, which is as close as Colt has ever seen to a grin from the old man.

"It depends," he says. "A lot of change comes from circumstance. If people can't change their circumstances, chances are they won't change their attitude concerning them. And if people can't change their attitude, then circumstances won't get any better. It's a cycle."

"So it all depends on how good someone has it?" Colt says. "People don't really change, they just stay who they are forever?"

"I didn't say that," the doc replies. "I meant, a lot of people come into my office wanting to change their lives when really, there's a specific part of their situation that needs to be addressed. Most of their unhappiness comes from the attitude they have towards particular aspects of their lives. They may not be able to control everything around them, but I try to show them that there are things they can work on changing, ways to change the way they see the world. They may not be able to pack up and move away and start a brand-new life, but they can start shifting some of their belief systems around, figuring out what's really important to them, what their core values are. And once they've identified those, they can start filtering their view of the world through those core values. A lot of the times, an attitude change is what makes circumstances better."

Colt snorts. "Sounds like one of those motivational posters my teachers used to hang in their classrooms."

This time, he actually gets a smile from the shrink.

"What do you think, Colt?" he asks. "Do you believe people can change?"

Colt opens his mouth, the closes it again. The reply he had dissolves on his tongue, sweeping a sour taste through his mouth.

"Leda thinks I should forgive him," he says, slouching into the couch. "She believes it's true."

"But you don't," the doc verifies. "You don't believe anything will ever change with him. That he's the same person he was when he betrayed your trust and lied about the night Jeff Fordham died."

Colt leans back into the couch. Every day he's been in here, it's smelled musty and almost damp, and the cushions sag with defeat even before he plants his ass down on top. The doc should really look into replacing this old thing. With the money Colt's mom and stepdad are paying him, he could afford a whole new office.

"It's okay to feel that way, you know." The doctor sits back in his seat, adjusting his glasses. "It doesn't make any sense, it's completely irrational, but that doesn't mean you don't blame him. And it's all right that you do. You don't have to forgive him."

Colt's eyes widen.

"Isn't that the entire point of why I'm here?" he asks the shrink. "Forgive my dad for being a terrible parent, talk about Atlanta, then you tell me to forgive him and get on with my life?"

The doctor gives Colt a small smile. "I'm not here to make you do anything, Colt. I'm here to help you better handle your PTSD. I'm here to help you manage your panic attacks and your high levels of anxiety. I'm here to help you come to terms with trauma. And yes, I'm here to help you move on with your life, but not by following a set of steps or checklist. Like I said – a lot of the time, people need to adjust the way they see the world. That's what I'm here for. I provide you the tools for coping; what you choose do to with them is entirely up to you."

 **IX.**

Nashville is a four-hour drive to Atlanta, but with traffic it takes Colt nearly six. By the time he ends up in front of the Continental Plaza Hotel, it's dusk and the whole city is made of shadows, the steel and metal and concrete that twists and soars from the asphalt like magnetic wildflowers reaching for the mysterious sky. It smells like dust and exhaust and BO and smoke and something else, a bite in the chill of the wind that slides across his bare forearms like the trace of fingernails raking across his skin.

He stands in front of the hotel lobby, not paying attention to the people brushing past him to get in and out the front doors, guests and bellhops and the valets. They disappear from the edge of his vision, then from his mind. The smell of the city and the walls around him evaporate into the wind, the metropolis as insubstantial as the silver and purple shadows surrounding him, all the noise fading to a dull buzz he can barely hear in the back of his head.

He feels sweat trickling down his cheeks and dotting his forehead, hear resting on his shoulders. Colt keeps his eyes closed, seeing spots dancing behind them, the bursts of color like fireworks. He stands there and feels the golden pulse of the city around him, the warmth swooping away like the wings of a bird as the shadows take over. Around him, everything feels quiet, the noise draining away until it's just a faint buzz in the back of his brain.

The memories mingle with the buzz of the city until they become a slow hum in his ears, drowning out the sound of his breathing as he tries to keep it steady.

It's not so much the actual memory of Jeff and Juliette that comes over him. It's more like the feelings he associated with that night, the confusion and fear, the shock and anger and desperation. But instead of letting the darkness bottle up inside him like a pressure cooker, he keeps his hands resting on his knees, gripping the fabric of his oil-stained jeans, and breathes, breathes, breathes.

And he looks up.

All those stupid lessons the shrink told him, the ones he thought were a waste of time, he tries to remember them, the words coming back slowly and echoing through his mind. All he knows is the hum in his ears, this soft twilight.

The hum sounds reminds him of Maddie, the low rumble of her voice when they were sneaking away to his empty house, voices muffled with bedsheets, both of them feeling off-balance from the thrill and newness of each other. It reminds him of Leda, whispering to Gabe at bedtime, words that made his eyes feel heavy. He thinks of Sage, and the music that would vibrate through the walls of their house whenever she was practicing her dance, the words indistinct through the plaster. His mother, humming as she cooks, tuneless and forgetting the words, feeding little bits to Gabe in his high chair.

Luke.

The air around him so alive, crackling with the energy he carried into a room with him, his presence, his force of being Luke Wheeler. The pattern of his fingers on the strings of his guitar, each sound smooth as a stone skipped over still, open water. The rough texture of his guitar-calloused fingertips as he ruffled Colt's hair, a small grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. The rumble of his voice against Colt's cheek when he was a little boy, the rough bristles of his beard scratching Colt's small, round face, as his father held onto him and waded into the deep waters of the lake and whispered, "it's all right, son, I got you. Everything's fine. I got you; you'll be all right."

Slowly, his breaths become quieter and the knot in his chest loosens. A sense of stillness, if not peace, comes over him in the tiny overheated space of the car, and the warm sun coming in through the windows buzzes through his ears, like it's humming him into placid quiet. The silence around him has a texture to it, viscous and warm, like swimming in honey. Strong and all around him, buoying him above the race of his heartbeat or the sound of black screams echoing through a neon night so long ago.

It's not happiness, exactly. What surrounds him isn't love, or peace, or joy. It's the nebulous sense that he will be okay, somehow. He is loved, he is cared for, he is doing the best he can, and nothing can hurt him.

He's safe. He's sure.

He opens his eyes, and he stands there on the sidewalk. The day is still glowing softly with the last bit of daylight, making the harshness of night and day fade into a soft, muted purple. The shadows are barely wind through the silver clouds.

He isn't afraid of these shadows. He isn't afraid of anything right now.

 **X.**

He's on her doorstep as soon as the sun rises. Mrs. Del Rosario answers in a bathrobe and surprised expression, then calls Leda downstairs. Gabe follows her, wide awake despite the early hour, wearing his favorite race car pajamas. He yells when he sees Colt and runs for him, and Colt sweeps him into his arms, inhaling the scent of cotton and sweat and morning breath, of Gabe, of everything important.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: The final chapter for the final day of the show. Seems depressingly appropriate, even if I'm still in denial about it.**

 **Thank you to everybody who has ever read any fic of mine. If you reblogged it, tweeted about it, reviewed it, or sent me a message just to say you enjoyed it, you are awesome. This was a great fandom to write for and I'm really proud of some of the fic I've written while being a Nashville fan. If I do say so myself, I think Nashies are a pretty awesome group =)**

 **I.**

You can't change the past; so don't dwell on it, or beat yourself up for it.

It's one of the shrink's favorite sayings, and Colt has heard it enough over the years that he practically hears it in his sleep. That phrase has always annoyed him, because it sounded like it should have been embroidered on a pillow on some fussy old lady's couch.

Irritating as it is, though, he can't deny there's some truth to it. His stepfather used to say that even a broken clock was right twice a day, and as time passes, Colt realizes that even a saying that sounds like it belongs on some inspirational quote-of-the-day calendar isn't as useless as it sounds.

He still wakes up in the middle of some nights to the echo of long-gone screams in his head; his heart still twitches when he hears the phone ring. The smell of bourbon still makes him sick to his stomach. Some nights, he has to peek his head into his son's bedroom to make sure he's still there, asleep under the racecar bed sheets, dreaming without fear.

Lately, though, those days are getting farther and farther apart. One day he'll hear the wail of an ambulance and feel his heart jump into his throat, but it won't be until later that he realizes the sound didn't make his world fall apart. He will accidentally cut himself slicing a tomato, and not panic at the sight of his blood dripping from his hand.

Gabe and Leda have changed, too. Before long, his son will be too big to carry, his weight too much for Colt to shift in his arms and balance on one hip as they walk down the sidewalk together, window-shopping with Leda's hand in his. He's really shot up these past few months; when the weather turned warm again, Leda went through all of Gabe's old clothes from last spring to see what still fit, and ended up having to donate most of it to Goodwill.

It will never stop amazing Colt, how quickly kids can grow. Not only that, but how it can happen right in front of your eyes, and you don't even notice it. Gabe is becoming somebody else, and Colt will have to keep getting used to this slightly newer person, until time passes and he starts changing again.

Some nights it's still hard to sleep, and that will never completely go away no matter how much of Atlanta starts to fade into the recesses of Colt's memories. It used to make him anxious, the nights he would lie awake watching the TV on mute or mindlessly surfing the internet. Now he just accepts it; it's always going to be a part of him, these long nights when he sees the sky light up, feeling like he's seeing the wrong side of the sun.

Those nights, he looks up to the sky and wonders if he'll fall back asleep sometime before the darkness fades, or if he'll dream about the night he watched a man fall through the night trying to save the life of somebody else.

Sometimes he wonders if his dad still thinks about that night at all. If it defines his life, as much as it defines Colt's.

But that's only sometimes. And those "sometimes" get less and less the more time goes by.

 **II.**

Colt takes Gabe to see Granddad on a long weekend, just the two of them. Gabe is excited to be spending so much one-on-one time with Colt, and Colt is breathing a sigh of relief that the Del Rosarios okayed this trip. They trust him; at one time, Colt wasn't even allowed to be alone in their house with his own son.

It's the first time Granddad has been around Gabe since he was a newborn, and Colt tries to hide how nervous he is. His grandfather is old-fashioned, and while that was something Colt grew to love about him after Atlanta, when he was desperate for structure and principles, it also meant that having a baby out of wedlock when you've barely graduated high school wasn't something Granddad approved of. He didn't outright say it, but he didn't have to; Colt could tell the old man was disappointed in Colt's choices.

But he held Gabe when he was an infant, rocking the little boy on Colt's mom's couch. He watched as Colt bathed and diapered and fed his son, his lined face expressionless. Colt sent him pictures of Gabe every year, and his grandfather always remarked at how much the boy had grown.

When they get to Granddad's, Colt reminds Gabe to shake hands, to say "yes sir", and to use his indoor voice. Granddad looks down at the little boy with mock-sternness, but there's a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

Colt is very aware of Granddad's eyes on the little boy all night, watching as Gabe says the prayer before the meal, says "please" and "thank you", and clears his plate from the table after they're finished eating. When it's time for bed, Gabe wants Granddad to help him get ready instead of Colt, and Colt is surprised when the old man agrees. He watches from the doorway as Granddad helps Gabe into his pajamas and stands over him as he says his bedtime prayer.

When Gabe is done praying for Mommy and Daddy and his whole family, Granddad looks at Colt and adds, "and we thank you for the gift of family. Without it, we'd be lost."

When the little boy is asleep, Colt and his grandfather walk downstairs and sit on the front porch, like they used to when Colt lived here. Those days, he'd spent all day working around the farm doing chores, and by the end of the day was so exhausted he could barely stand upright. But he was content with himself as Colt thinks he's ever been, because those were the nights when he knew he'd done a hard day's work, and was proud of himself for it. That was something Luke had never shown him.

"You're raising a fine man there," the old man tells him, after they've been sitting in the humid silence for a long time, and Colt feels something like relief wash through him. Granddad was the person he turned to when he had nothing left to believe in; if someone as strong as he is believes Colt is doing the right thing, then he must be finally getting his life back together.

 **III.**

"Do you think you'll ever forgive your father?"

Colt can't answer yes, but he doesn't want to answer no.

But the doc can never take silence as an answer, so he just sits back with that unreadable smile on his face, patiently waiting for his response.

"Let me put it this way," he says. "Do you think you'll stop being angry at your father?"

"I'm not mad anymore," Colt replies, and as soon as he says it he knows it's true, even though he can't remember coming to that conclusion on his own. "I quit being mad a while ago."

"Why?"

Head-shrinkers. They love the "why". Almost as much as they love "and how does that make you feel?" and questions about your relationship with your mother.

"Too much other shit to deal with, I guess," Colt says.

"Such as?" the doc prompts.

Colt sighs. "Gabe. Parenting. Just doing that, every single day, on top of work and chores and paying bills and other stuff. Like, car insurance, and Leda's college tuition, and jury duty, and trying to plan a wedding. All that, and we have our kid to think about."

The doctor nods.

"It's not like I'm never _not_ angry," he says slowly. "It's just not as strong as it used to be. I don't want to say I got over it, but I guess I just have too much going on in my life to always be thinking about my dad."

"You're no longer stuck on a loop," the doctor narrates.

Colt nods. "Yeah. I mean, I go for a long time without thinking about all that, and then I remember and the world doesn't fall apart."

"Because you don't let it, or because it doesn't affect you as much as it did when you were a teenager?"

It takes Colt a moment before he answers.

The more Colt thinks about it, the more he understands:

Luke was always good at the big stuff – lavish gifts, fancy vacations, expensive clothes and gadgets – but the day-to-day stuff was beyond him. And Colt's realized the boring, tough, unglamorous stuff is more important in the long run, and kept the world spinning. His dad didn't get that, sitting on top of his empire.

Depending on someone to honor their promises, to show up when they say they'll show up, to stay true to their word, to finish what they started and do what they say they will do – those are the important things.

"Both, I guess," he says. "I can't just forget about my family when life sucks, and I had to work so hard to get Leda's parents to trust me again. I don't want to fail them again."

"What about Leda?" the doctor asks, leaning forward. "Do you think she trusts you?"

Leda.

He doesn't love Leda the same way he loved Maddie. Colt wonders if he ever will love someone the way he fell in love with Maddie when they were kids. But with Leda, it almost doesn't matter. They have Gabe, and no matter if they get married a year from now or break up in three months, they'll always be connected.

He can trust that she'll always put their son first, and she knows to expect the same from him. The everyday grind of honoring that for each other is long and tough and wearying enough without adding anger to the mix.

"For sure," he says. "And it's the same for me."

 **IV.**

They take Gabe on his first trip to the beach, and Leda has never seen the ocean so it's a first for both of them. She had swim lessons at the local YMCA when she was a kid, but stopped going in the water sometime in middle school. That was when going to the pool to actually swim became the lame kid thing to do. Nobody explained it to her, but she still learned, the way every middle schooler learns what becomes mysteriously "cool" and what does not. As soon as they were around twelve, girls were supposed to wear printed bikinis and platform flip-flops, their hair pulled back in sloppy buns off their necks. They were supposed to lay out all day in the sun with Cosmopolitan and overpriced bottles of water from the concession stand. They'd complain about the heat but never go in the water, untie the knots on their bikini tops and compare tan lines, and giggle as the boys whooped and hollered off the high dive, trying to show off.

Leda never much liked the pool, after that. It was too hot to sit in the sun all day, and every time she went in the water she was either splashed by a bunch of little boys playing some kind of underwater freeze tag or hearing some "black people can't swim" joke. Her skin was already dark without a tan, and she didn't see the point in coming down to the pool just to lie around and be hot all day. She could lay around and be hot at home; if those girls in the platform sandals were going to complain about the heat, why did they even bother coming here?

But the ocean is completely different from the little community pool, and she realizes this before her feet even touch sand. From miles away she can smell it, the salt and damp and earth. It's almost sour, an overwhelming heaviness to the air that carries on the wind. And when Colt drives down the two-lane road that parallels the ocean, she sits up and leans over, eyes wide as she peers through the thick rows of palms and mangroves for the elusive hint of blue; the endless stripe of the ocean against the sloping beach, bright as a jewel and looking like it swallows the sky.

Colt takes Gabe right to the shoreline, and Leda can't let them out of her sight; pictures and movies couldn't prepare her for how endless and secretive the ocean is up close, how it hasn't changed since the first day the world existed and it will still be the same when every one of them is long gone. The water is flat and completely calm, but her mind goes to riptides, currents, shark attacks, sudden drownings. She sits on the sand and watches Colt hold Gabe on his waist, walking where the water comes up to his chest. Gabe kicks his legs and flaps his arms, splashing the salty water around them in a white cloud and laughing as he smacks the water over and over. Then there's a wail of surprise when he puts a fist in his mouth and realizes the ocean's salty taste. The water mats his wild curls in tangles, and Colt's own dark hair is slicked all the way back against his head. They laugh and splash and wade some more, as Colt holds on tight to Gabe and walks across the sandy ocean floor, pointing to Leda still on the beach. They both wave to her from the water.

Leda watches Colt, and for the first time in a long time she doesn't see the boy who has nightmares and sometimes goes for days without sleeping. She doesn't see the boy who can be sweet and talkative and so full of life one minute, then sullen and withdrawn the next. The boy who jumps at the sound of a ringing phone, who sometimes gets this wild look in his eyes that Leda can't understand. She doesn't see the boy who sometimes scares her as much as she loves him.

She watches Colt with their son, and sees someone she wants in Gabe's life to watch him grow up.

She watches Colt, and sees the man her son could become. And she can't wait to meet him.

 **V.**

Colt learns: He can't be everything his son needs him to be.

It makes him feel helpless to think about it, all the missteps he could take. The small seeds that can grow into something ugly and tear him away from his child; how the choices Colt makes will affect more than he can control.

Colt learns: There are parts of Gabe's life Colt will never understand, because Gabe is his own person and has to make his own choices. One day, Gabe will one day ask him questions Colt won't have the answers to, the same way Gabe will learn that his father cannot fix everything that is broken, or right every wrong

Colt learns: The best thing he can do is raise his son with integrity, compassion, and honesty. To make sure he believes in something, to make sure he stands for something. And maybe, Gabe will make the right choices.

Leda learns: This is something he'll be fighting for the rest of his life.

She can't understand what nightmares lurk inside Colt's head and in his heart. She won't see what wire has been tripped to set off the memories he can't run from. She doesn't understand why her son's father disappears into himself the way he does; why it's impossible to escape the darkness.

Leda learns: She loves Colt. She wants to raise their son with him, spend her life with him.

But she's also learned that the Disney-packaged dream that love saves all is just that – a dream.

Leda learns: Colt has been saving himself little by little; all she can do is be there, and sometimes, that's all he needs. And when it isn't, she'll make sure to be listen. To raise her son with strength and steadiness, to make sure he grows up unafraid of the dark that sometimes catches up with his father.

They don't understand.

But they try.

They are imperfect, they are selfish, they are angry. They are confused, they are hurt, they are loving. They are young and unsure and insecure and human, and this is the best they can do.

They try.

 **VI.**

This one time, he sends a text message.

He moves his fingers across the keypad, then suddenly pauses. Instead of typing, he scrolls through his photographs until he finds the one he wants. It's a picture of him and Gabe and Leda on his stepfather's boat last summer, when they took the little boy fishing for the first time. Gabe is dressed in an orange life preserver and has his reel in the lake with Colt and Leda on either side of him. Colt is pointing at something under the water, and Leda holding her hands up to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the sun.

Colt remembers putting the fishing rod in his son's small hands for the first time. It made him think about the time he was six and got his lip caught on a hook, and his dad rushed him to the hospital.

"My dad caught me fishing," was what Colt told the nurse, and Luke had managed a small smile, even though his face was white as a sheet.

His father had been so afraid of losing him that day. He was overwhelmed with fear that Colt was hurt, and he couldn't save him.

Colt thinks: there are so many ways to lose people.

He remembers that afternoon in the emergency room with his father as he clicks on the picture. Before he can second-guess himself, he hits SEND.

 **VII.**

The first time Colt lays eyes on his father in almost seven years, the first thing to strikes him is how old Luke has gotten.

Not physically – he's not even fifty yet – but something about Luke is stooped and weathered where it wasn't before. It's as if he's been slowly eroding in the time since Colt walked away and cut off all contact, certain he never wanted to see his father again.

Luke's eyes are faded, the lines around his mouth tired, and he doesn't try to bluster or charm or play the big-hatted superstar when he lets Colt into the house and they stare at each other, two feet and years of hurt and silence between them.

Luke doesn't try to be anything. He just stands there, hands in his pockets like a chastened schoolboy, looking for the first time like the old man he will become.

Finally, Colt clears his throat, and he glances down at his son, who is watching Luke curiously.

"Buddy," he says, "I want you to meet somebody."

Luke's face turns white. His expression tightens into an expression Colt hasn't seen in years – the same one he got when Colt was six and got his lip snagged on that fish hook, and he was afraid that Colt was seriously hurt.

Colt glances up at his father, tilting his head slightly. Luke stands there for a moment, frozen, but then he kneels down next to Gabe, their faces only inches apart.

"Hi there, son." he says, his voice shaking. "Do you know who I am?"

His son stares at Luke, eyes wide, and another thing strikes Colt suddenly. All this time, he believed Gabe looked nothing like his grandfather. Now, seeing their faces so close together for the first time, one dark, one light, brown eyes and blue, he sees that's not the case. There's no mistaking it; this little boy is Luke Wheeler's grandson.

"Daddy said you're _his_ Daddy," Gabe says, pointing at Luke.

Luke seems startled that Gabe can speak, as if the little boy is five months old, not five years. His eyes shift to Colt for the briefest second, then back down to Gabe.

"That's right," he says, and just like that there are tears pouring down Luke's face. "Which means I'm your grandpa."

Gabe's eyes flicker to Colt, looking at him like he isn't sure if this is some kind of trick. Luke, for his part, is openly weeping, unable to say another word.

Colt has never seen his father cry.

"What do you say, Buddy?" Colt prompts.

Gabe turns to Luke and nods, his hair flying in every direction. "Nice to meet you, sir."

Luke's face turns red, his eyes watering.

"Sir," he repeats, looking at Colt, and his face crumbles around the word. He balls his hand into a fist and presses it against his lips, like he's desperately trying to hold something in.

Gabe turns to Colt, his expression confused.

"That's all right," his father says, hoarsely, and reaches a hand out for Gabe to shake. "We can figure things out later. How about just a handshake for now?"

Gabe copies Luke's motions, one small, dark hand closed in his larger, paler one, and a fresh round of tears pours from Luke's eyes.

"That's one heck of a handshake you got there," he tells Gabe, his voice hoarse with tears. "Strong. Like a man."

Gabe looks back up at Colt, hand still wrapped in Luke's hold.

"He's a tough guy," Colt remarks, ruffling his son's hair. Gabe scowls at him, yanking his head away, and Colt grins.

Luke does, too. "I can tell."

"I'm the biggest on my soccer team," Gabe says proudly. "Really! It's true! I'm the biggest and I can run faster than anybody!"

Luke bursts into laughter, and now Colt definitely sees the resemblance to Gabe in that expression. He wonders how he could have ever missed it.

His father wipes his face with one hand and straightens up, looking around as if he's waiting for a manager or image guru to supply him with the next thing to say. It's strange, to see Luke Wheeler at a loss for words.

Finally, he looks at Colt from under the brim of his cap, expression suddenly shy.

"Well," is what he comes up with, and then shifts in place. "How's about we get something to eat? Maybe later we can take a look around the place, show Gabe here the ranch. Or we could just stay here. Whatever you want to do."

Gabe turns to Colt. "Daddy, I'm hungry."

Luke grins at him, laughing a little as he wipes some more tears away.

"Looks like someone's already made up his mind," he says to Gabe, and gestures towards the kitchen. "How 'bout some of Memaw Wheeler's famous mac n' cheese?"

 **VIII.**

There will be plenty of time to talk about Atlanta. About Jeff. About what has happened since that night, and if whatever is broken between them can ever completely be fixed. There is going to be a lot of hurt to untangle, a lot of resentment and confusion to overcome. A lot of pain to sift through, and apologies to be made on both sides.

There will also be a lot of happier things, too – Gabe's first words, his first steps, his first birthday, what he likes and dislikes, his favorite toys and songs and everything about him. Luke will horde it all greedily, wanting to get down on his knees and beg for more. But he won't, because he's afraid Colt will change his mind and whisk this grandson away if he demands too much, too soon, and this time, he won't get a second chance.

There is so much Luke knows he does not deserve. But he wants to earn it all back, more than he's ever wanted any award or number one song or platinum record or cover of a damn magazine. It can all go to Hell, along with his career, if his son will just stay right here, right now.

There will be time for all of that. Luke will make all the time in the world for it, and Colt will slowly, slowly, slowly learn this.

Trust will take longer, but it will come, too. One day.

But for now, that is all going to happen later.

Right now, all that happens is that Gabe climbs into a chair at the kitchen table and Luke watches Colt for the next step to take. Colt will ask his father if he still remembers how to cook bacon the way Colt prefers and Luke will say yes, son, of course, like he's waited his entire life to be asked that. He will start searching frantically for a pan and some uncooked bacon, and Colt will tell him that Gabe loves his bacon cooked the same way Sage does.

It's a test, and both of them know it.

So when Luke scoops a handful of bacon onto his grandson's plate, cooked exactly the way the little boy likes it even though they've never met before today, Colt recognizes his sister's favorite food and watches his son take a bite, reminding him to say thank-you to his granddad.

Luke's eyes meet Colt's over Gabe's dark curls, and the look there says _yes, yes, I will. I will be here, whatever you need from me, whatever you ask, here I am. I am willing._

 _I am ready._

 _Let's talk._


End file.
